Immigration arrests in, near Salem prompt schools to reinforce safety plans
An increase in federal immigration arrests and detentions around Salem this week has school officials shoring up plans to keep students safe while in school care.
No immigration officer has attempted to enter a local school or detain anyone during school pick up or drop off, said Salem-Keizer School District Superintendent Andrea Castañeda.
But Castañeda and leaders of the district’s teacher union are reminding educators and families about district policies, which don’t allow immigration authorities to enter school buildings or access student records without a court order.
That comes as they’re contending with more questions and anxiety from both families and employees following immigration arrests in Salem and nearby communities this week. About half of the district’s 38,000 students are Latino, and many students come from immigrant families.
“The questions do not feel new. The urgency and tone of them is new because the risks feel much more proximal right now,” Castañeda said.
What’s known about Salem immigration arrests
Federal immigration authorities are currently operating in and around Salem, the Salem Police Department confirmed Thursday.
But Salem police spokesperson Sgt. Jon Hardy said that federal authorities do not give the department notice ahead of their presence or operations in the community. Officers receive little to no information about what enforcement ICE or other agencies carry out in Salem, according to Hardy. The department has few or no details about who the operations target, where they occur and when.
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to questions about reported ICE arrests in Salem this week.
Reports of immigration activity typically come from a coalition of nonprofit groups that serve farmworkers, immigrant and Latino families and work to verify what community members report.
Multiple such groups, including PCUN, Latinos Unidos Siempre and the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition, reported multiple immigration arrests in Woodburn Wednesday, and one in Salem.
Latinos Unidos Siempre reported Thursday that ICE arrested a person in northeast Salem around 5 a.m.
Oregon farmworker union PCUN, based in Woodburn, confirmed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested one person in Salem and at least three in Woodburn on Wednesday.
This week’s arrests did not appear to be targeted, according to Reyna Lopez, PCUN’s executive director. The arrests “included agents surveilling apartment complexes where our member families reside and agents making detentions early in the morning, at the time farmworkers are leaving for work or dropping off their children at school,” Lopez said in a declaration filed Thursday as part of a larger federal lawsuit alleging ICE routinely denies people access to lawyers after detaining them.
READ IT: Reyna Lopez declaration in PCUN suit against ICE
Other incidents this week include the arrest of a Woodburn School District parent at his home Wednesday and immigration authorities parking at a Wilsonville middle school to conduct surveillance.
ICE had a longstanding practice of avoiding arrests in sensitive locations such as churches, hospitals and schools but the Trump administration rescinded those policies in January, days into the president’s second term.
The school district early this year published a guide for families to “plan for their children’s care in the event they are detained, deported, incapacitated or otherwise unavailable for any period of time.”
Castaneda said district policies haven’t changed, but district leaders this week have reiterated to employees and families the steps they take to ensure students are safe in school care.
That included a reminder this week to school bus drivers about existing district policy of making sure students won’t be entering a dangerous situation when they step off the bus — whether it’s a fire, wild animal or active law enforcement scene.
“If upon opening the bus doors, you see any reason to think that the students exiting the bus may not be safe, do not leave the students there,” Castañeda said.
She said it’s not yet clear if specific immigration enforcement activities are impacting school attendance, an ongoing struggle for the district.
“We haven’t seen anything that we could isolate and say, ‘This is a result,’ but we do want to continue to encourage families to send students to school,” she said. “We have worked really diligently to make sure they are safe even in the face of this additional uncertainty and threat.”
The increased fear caused by an uptick in immigration enforcement “does no good in our shared pursuit of student health and academic growth,” Castañeda said.
Leaders of the Salem Keizer Education Association sent an email to district teachers Thursday notifying them that ICE agents had been spotted locally and urging them to avoid confronting officers if they’re spotted at school.
Castañeda and union leaders reinforced that any immigration effort to enter schools should be reported to the district’s safety and risk management office or the superintendent’s office immediately.
“It should always be the case that we are asking anyone who’s not a staff member who they are and why they’re seeking to enter our schools,” Castañeda said.
Union President Maraline Ellis said members span the political spectrum, but share an interest in keeping staff and students safe at school.
“For successful learning you have to feel safe and secure,” she said. “Anything that interferes with that becomes a concern with ours.”
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for over a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.
