ICE took an 8-year-old Haitian boy into custody after calling him in for a check-in Wednesday, sparking outrage among San Diego Unified School District leaders, who said Friday they were unsure where the child was being held.
The boy is a third grader at Fay Elementary School in City Heights and previously had Temporary Protected Status, according to district officials, who said he was staying with his uncle after his father was deported last year.
Video recorded by a volunteer observer at the federal building in downtown San Diego shows three armed federal agents walking the boy away from ICE’s field office and into an elevator.
SDUSD’s superintendent and school board members were among nearly a dozen community leaders who signed a letter Friday to DHS about the case, calling the boy’s detention “particularly troubling,” and expressing concern more broadly on the elimination of TPS and its impact on students.
The district said the child received a letter to meet with an ICE agent and his uncle took him “because he did not want to break the law.” The agent then took the child into custody under a 2008 law protecting trafficking victims, the letter said, “leaving the uncle distraught, and this eight-year-old without the support of their family, community and their school.”
A DHS spokesperson said ICE took the child into custody “out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the child’s safety” after his uncle could not establish legal guardianship.
The agency said a man “claiming to be the child’s uncle took him to an ICE check in” and ICE “confirmed that he was not part of either family unit he had been living with,” and “the alleged uncle could not establish legal guardianship.”
The Department of Homeland Security said Customs and Border Protection previously deported the father to Mexico. It’s not clear where the boy’s mother is.
“We are not entirely clear where they are. We believe they may be in Los Angeles. They are certainly not with family or with a designated caregiver,” SDUSD Board Trustee Cody Petterson said. The DHS said the boy was placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“This could very well be my child, could be your child. It could be any of our child,” Petterson said, noting that this was, to his knowledge, the first time ICE had detained a child who attends an SDUSD school.
A DHS spokesperson said in a statement:
Allegations that ICE took a third grader into custody to be placed in detention are false, and any suggestion otherwise is a depraved attempt to smear our ICE law enforcement officers and undermine the work of President Trump and Secretary Mullin to protect children.
“ICE understands that this is absolutely not where this child should be,” Petterson said. “For us, it’s a very clear case in which there’s no question that the best place for this child is with their caregiver, their uncle, and one of the worst places they could possibly be is in a cage somewhere with nobody they know, not understanding the process, and not understanding what’s about to happen to them.”
The board’s letter demands the Trump Administration prioritize keeping children as close as possible to their home schools and communities, as well as coordination with local districts before relocating them.
“Every child deserves stability, dignity, and access to education,” the letter reads. “Regardless of immigration status or family circumstances, children should not bear the educational consequences of policy decisions over which they have no control.”
“Kids are supposed to be sacred,” said San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who represents City Heights and signed the letter.
“So when you create a system that you know is going to harm children and don’t care, what that tells me is you don’t see the humanity of the people who are being impacted. And that scares the hell out of me,” he continued. “Because once that’s gone, that opens the door to the worst things that happen in human history, right?”
“We are living under a cloud of terror,” said Guerline Jozef, of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, calling the revocation of TPS and the ensuing arrests of Haitians who have lost their legal status “incredibly painful.”
“Even the ICE locator, what we used to try to find out where a person is – now they have changed that,” Jozef continued. “The moment they kidnap or take a person within the community, we don’t know if we will ever hear from them again.”
Rep. Juan Vargas’ office is handling the boy’s casework, they said. In a statement, he said the detention was “despicable” and “inhumane,” calling on the Trump Administration to release the child and restore TPS.
Jozef said her organization is also working to get more information on the child and his family.
“I’m sure he is fearful. He is traumatized,” Jozef said. “So we are praying and we are fighting, and we will continue to fight to get a solution on his behalf.”
“When we put children into that state, the fear, the trauma can stay with them for the rest of their lives.”