Waltham Officials Offer Clarity On What ICE Can, Can't Do In Schools

WALTHAM, MA — President Donald Trump's immediate ramping up of Immigration and Customs Enforcement action since taking office has surfaced concerns in the Waltham Public School District.

Officials with the district issued a letter to the community recently, offering an explainer to those concerned about what ICE officials can and can't do in Waltham schools.

The Trump administration announced it would allow federal immigration agencies to make arrests at schools, churches and hospitals, ending a policy that had been in effect since 2011.

It's part of a campaign platform made by Trump, who vowed — and has now begun — to launch a nationwide deportation campaign.

Waltham officials, however, noted that ICE is limited in their scope within schools.

"ICE agents will not be allowed access to our schools without proper judicial warrants and will not be allowed to disrupt our educational programming in any way," acting Superintendent Kate Peretz said.

Peretz noted that Mayor Jeanette McCarthy and Waltham police officials are not only in support of the edict, but it isn't the latter's policy to enforce civil warrants like the ones ICE presents.

Additionally, Peretz said ICE agents won't be admitted into school buildings without judicial warrants, and school principals have been directed to notify district officials should they show up at all.

ICE arrests have been ongoing in Massachusetts, but not all have been warranted.

A Lynn teenager, Zeneyda Barrera, 18, was arrested and held for days in a Maine jail after a recent court appearance for what reports have called a "domestic dispute," but what Barrera's lawyer said was "two siblings getting into an argument over a telephone and pushing each other."

The case is being dismissed.

The Barrera family came to the U.S. from Nicaragua two years ago and has an asylum application in review, giving Zeneyda legal status.