Throughout the City of Austin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is conducting raids looking for undocumented immigrants.

The raids started the beginning of February and anyone who was picked up by ICE agents, and was undocumented was arrested and deported back to their native country.

As the raids were being conducted, the Austin Independent School District (AISD) had teachers wondering what to do to help their students. Some started helping their students in a variety of ways and were eventually instructed by the district on what they could legally do to intervene.

“Although the district has not provided any formal training, all employees were provided a quick reference guide and additional lesson plan resources to assist teachers with tools and information to guide classroom discussions and/or individual student advising,” Bowie lead counselor Karina Reyna said.

For superintendent Dr. Paul Cruz informing teachers on how to deal with these ongoing problems is not a new thing.

“Training to support all our students, including immigrant and refugee students, is not a finite process -it is ongoing and continuing to ensure we support our teachers and students,” Cruz said.                

Senior Angelica Aguilar and her family were frightened by the ICE raids that were happening since her family is a family of immigrants from Mexico.

“In my family I have seven family members that are undocumented who came from Central and South America,” Aguilar said. “ICE was really scaring my family, my aunts and uncles were not leaving there home for days some for weeks because they were scared that they were going to go to Wal-Mart and never be able to see their kids again. No one should ever have to go through that.”

During the ICE raids people got together and had a day of protest called, “A day without immigrants,” during the day people who are immigrants or came from a family of immigrants showed what it would be like without immigrants in this world.

“I found the day without immigrants very important. In my opinion, the most effective way to take action and cause change is to cause financial strain on an institution,” US history teacher Kaylin Brett said. “For the day without immigrants, it was estimated that Austin ISD lost around $880,000.”

AISD has always considered their schools as a safe place for students to come and learn regardless of their families immigration status.

“In February, the AISD Board approved a resolution that highlighted the values and beliefs of AISD in relation to students and families facing immigration issues,” Reyna said.

Having a safe, effective, and bully free schools is something that AISD has always done and are starting to make that clear again.

“AISD makes clear that all students in AISD are entitled a safe and supportive learning environment,” Reyna said. “AISD will not support or tolerate discrimination of any kind, including discrimination based on “national origin”.”

Aguilar believes that having to deal with ICE all by yourself is too much for someone to have to deal with and having support at school is a good thing to offer for some people.

“Teachers definitely should be trained on how to deal with this because ICE is a lot to handle for one person and for a student to know that there is someone at school that is willing to help them get through this is a big deal for that one person who isn’t doing too good right now,” Aguilar said.

For Interim Principal Susan Leos all of her students are important to her no matter what is going in at home or what their immigration status may be.

“All students are important to me and to all of our staff members here at Bowie,” Leos said. “We all recognize that each student here has individual needs, and we are prepared to support all students academically, socially, and emotionally.”