WINOOSKI, Vt. (WCAX) – School officials in Winooski are hearing from parents worried about the potential for stepped-up federal immigration enforcement in schools under a new Trump administration. The district, one of Vermont’s most ethnically diverse, is working to put protections in place to ease those concerns.
“My whole friend group, some of us are immigrants. We are like, what’s going to happen to some of us, because Trump kept on saying, on day one I am going to deport a bunch of people. So, generally, we are all worried,” said Gabby Dzessou, a first-year student at Winooski High School.
While Dzessou has lived in Vermont her whole life, she can’t say the same for many of her friends. She says she was relieved when she heard her school was working on a policy to protect those students. “There was still some doubt and worry within my friend group. So, I was really excited when I heard. It makes me realize that these people do care about their students. They are all worried about our futures,” she said.
The policy, to be proposed Wednesday to the school board, limits access to student and family information if federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement come onto campus.
“Any staff member that receives that entity has to bring that to me immediately. Usually what that will mean is that we will ask for a very specific type of court order that tells us exactly what the action is going to be, who is going to be affected, and what our role is in it,” said Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria. He says the school will legally abide if that does happen, but that ICE has a long-standing policy that agents will not conduct enforcement in places like schools.
Despite that, Brett Stokes with the Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Justice Reform Clinic, says schools should take precautions just in case. “Putting a policy like that in place not only instills at the very least a K-12 education but I think makes it so any type of noncitizen can feel safer exercising that right,” he said.
The superintendent is presenting the policy to the school board on Wednesday.