Lori Garrett-Hatfield is the chair of the K-12 committee at Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition, a nonprofit that supports and advocates for immigrant families.
Q: The Trump administration is allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to target schools, churches and hospitals, a practice that hasn’t been allowed since 2011. What has been the impact of these changes in schools across Clarke County?
A: What we have right now are teachers that are upset. As a teacher, your mission is children. Your job is to protect children, even to the point where you are going to stand in front of a child and take a bullet. Now, we are supposed to remain neutral and just allow this to happen.
Then, you have parents that are scared. They are terrified that ICE is going to come on campus and take their children. I had a parent call me the other day and say, “I saw a van with blacked out windows. I think it’s ‘la migra’ (ICE),” and it shows you the fear that we have going on right now.
Q: Is this fear affecting parents’ decision to send their kids to school?
A: Yes, they’ve kept their kids home because they are scared to put their kids on the bus. They think, “What if ICE can get on the bus?” Now, I think the chances of that are small. However, it’s a genuine fear that parents have.
Q: Can you elaborate more on how teachers are reacting to the new policies?
A: This has brought out more anger than I’ve seen in a long time, probably since Uvalde and Sandy Hook. People are upset and angry, to the point where I’ve had teachers that say, “They are not taking my kid. I don’t care if I have to go to jail. They are not taking one of my students out of my classroom.”
Q: Do you think this culture of fear is going to affect these students in the long term?
A: Yes, indisputably. We already know that having a family member deported or arrested has devastating implications for children. The last time we had several deportations across the district, we had kids with major PTSD. I had an 8-year-old student who saw a police car pull into the school and she flipped out because she had this immediate flashback to a family member who had been arrested in front of her. We know that for older students, there can be a propensity for drug and alcohol use. Some of the older kids I’ve taught had to drop out because somebody in their family got arrested and they had to work to support their families.
Q: What is your favorite part about your job with AIRC?
A: I think for a lot of us, it’s easy to get discouraged, but seeing all of these people from various backgrounds, various ages, flood into our rooms (at AIRC meetings) is encouraging. It gives me hope that things will be better. And I have to continue to hope, right? Otherwise it’s easy to sink into despair and I don’t think any of us are going to be doing any good if we’re in despair.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity.
Maia Capuano is a journalism major covering local news and government.
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