Immigration enforcement is inching closer to Southeast Baltimore schools

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told Maryland superintendents in January they wouldn’t enter school buildings. They haven’t.

But, in Southeast Baltimore this month, they’ve been getting closer to campuses, prompting school officials to take extra measures to make families feel safe sending their children to school.

Last week, a Baltimore City Schools police officer was posted outside Hampstead Hill Academy, an elementary-middle school in Canton, during drop-off. He said he was dispatched there after parents and staff members reported seeing dark, unmarked vehicles near the school filled with people wearing green vests and military gear — hallmarks of ICE.

Over a third of Hampstead Hill’s 900 students are Hispanic and nearly 20% are multilingual learners, who are students learning to speak English.

“It is absolutely absurd that we need school police to make us feel safe from our federal government,” said City Council President Zeke Cohen, who sends his kids to Hampstead Hill.

Since last school year, City Schools has lost 1,200 multilingual learners, a group that used to be one of the fastest growing in the system. The number of Hispanic students who graduated from high school last school year also dipped statewide, a trend education officials blamed on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Baltimore teachers and city officials said students notice when their friends don’t come back to school, and it disrupts their learning and well-being.

Councilman Mark Parker, whose daughter attends Patterson Park Public Charter School, said she and her friends talked about the ICE sightings on their way to school.

“Kids are aware that this is a dynamic and are worried about each other,” Parker said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions about activity near Southeast Baltimore schools.

Baltimore City Public Schools officials declined interview requests. Several school leaders would not speak on the record because they feared immigration enforcement would target their largely Hispanic student populations if they talked to the media.

Lilly, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect an undocumented family member, was among the parents who spotted people she thought were ICE agents near the school May 5. She had just dropped her son off when she noticed four dark vehicles with tinted windows driving on Linwood Avenue toward Hampstead Hill.

Lilly grew up with undocumented parents and felt confident the agents’ green vests belonged to ICE. She contacted school faculty and ended up comforting a startled immigrant mom who’d just dropped off her own child.

Lilly said it feels as though the immigrant families in her neighborhood are “trapped” inside by fear of ICE.

“I was concerned for community members, my fellow parents,” she said. “It feels like we’re living in a Third World country.”

The same morning, a neighborhood resident recorded ICE agents outside Patterson Park Public Charter School, located across the park from Hampstead Hill. The video shows a line of dark vehicles in front of the park and across from the school on North Lakewood Avenue.

Outside the SUVs, a few people in green vests stand behind a person with their hands behind their back as a masked man gets into the driver’s side of a truck. The resident who recorded the interaction asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation from her government employer.

Deni Miller, whose two sons attend Patterson Park Public Charter, said she saw videos and photos of what neighbors said were ICE cars and officers on social media. Later that morning, she received an email from the elementary-middle school. ICE had been spotted nearby that morning, it said, and recess would be held indoors “out of an abundance of caution.”

“If your child asks about indoor recess, you can simply share that we are staying inside today to be safe,” the email reads.

Miller’s 12-year-old son, Teddy, said he hasn’t seen or heard much when it comes to ICE near his school. But he has a friend whose uncle was taken by ICE and another who leaves school early to avoid being near the park at dismissal where agents are known to gather, Miller said.

“It’s been scary for me that I might lose some of my friends if ICE is gonna take them away or try to deport them,” Teddy said. “If they’re by my school, they could try to come in. They could try to take away my friends. There’s a lot of bad things that could happen.”

Under Maryland law, public schools must deny ICE agents access to private areas unless there’s an emergency or agents have a judicial warrant signed by a federal judge or magistrate. In those cases, Baltimore school officials need permission from the Office of Legal Counsel before answering questions or letting agents in, and the agents must be unmasked. But officials, including police officers, can’t interfere with federal agents.

Brandon Scott’s spokesperson, Jonas Poggi, said the mayor is aware of recent incidents near schools and signed the Safe Spaces and Communities Act, which sets standards for how city agencies interact with agents and prohibits Baltimore Police from cooperating with ICE. It says immigration officials cannot use city-owned spaces including schools “for the purpose of staging, coordinating, planning or conducting an immigration enforcement action without a valid permit.”

“Incidents like this undermine community trust, make us less safe and directly impact the well-being and health — including mental health — of Baltimore’s youth and their families,“ Poggi said.

Teacher Kristen Tranberg said escalating fear is nothing new for Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School, where nearly 90% of the 900 students are Hispanic and three-quarters are learning English. She said six kindergartners have left her class this year.

“A lot of our students, if they know that ICE is in the neighborhood, they won’t come to school,” Tranberg said. “I personally had to walk to go get one of my students because his mother was afraid to leave her house.”

The school is across the street from Ovenbird Bakery’s Highlandtown location, where immigration officers recently chased a man.

School administrators are outside frequently and neighborhood volunteers patrol to make sure everyone is safe, Tranberg said. But that doesn’t mean things feel normal for kids.

“It’s hard to have children come to school every day and want to learn letters and learn sounds when they’re genuinely scared,” she said. “Until we can feel safe and secure in our own lives, our brains are not able to be ready to learn.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.