1/22/2019 The School-to-Deportation Pipeline | Teaching Tolerance

FEATURE

The School-to-Deportation Pipeline

As immigration enforcement becomes more aggressive, schools have become increasingly risky places for
undocumented students.

Issue 60, Fall 2018 | By Coshandra Dillard

Illustration by Rob Dobi

On a Saturday afternoon in Houston, Dennis Rivera-Sarmiento crossed a stage

donning a green graduation gown. The 19-year-old was proud of this moment—one
he wasn’t sure would happen.

Just months before, a scuffle with a classmate near Stephen F. Austin High School
threatened his future in the United States. Charged with assault, he was arrested by
campus police, sent to county jail, then held in three different Texas immigration
detention centers, including one located more than an hour from his home.

He’d been bullied at school because he’s an undocumented immigrant, but he usually
kept a cool head about it. On that fateful day in late January, he felt threatened
enough to respond to an attack.

He says the classmate repeatedly shouted a racial slur before hurling a Gatorade
bottle at him. Then she walked toward him. He pushed her, knocking her to the
ground. The student alleges Rivera-Sarmiento punched her in the head, although he
denies this.

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He knew there would be fallout from the incident, so he reported to the school’s
office to explain what happened.

This is the moment Rivera-Sarmiento entered the school-to-deportation pipeline—a

channel in which undocumented students are subjected to interacting with law
enforcement and subsequently funneled into the punitive immigration system.

“At the beginning, I was feeling like everything was going to be OK for me,” he
recounts. “But then when they told me that they were going to detain me, I knew I
was in trouble.”

Rivera-Sarmiento’s experience is a direct result of the school-to-prison pipeline

(STPP)—a phenomenon in which students are criminalized through punitive
discipline practices that push them out of school, increasing the likelihood they’ll
come into contact with the criminal justice system. The STPP disproportionately
affects black and brown students and students with disabilities. These students are
also disciplined more often and more harshly compared to their white and Asian
counterparts, regardless of income level, reinforcing the opportunity gap for
historically marginalized groups.

Disciplinary protocols that involve school resource officers (SROs), combined with
stricter immigration enforcement, leave undocumented students in a particularly
vulnerable position.

An estimated 725,000 students in grades K–12 are undocumented, according to the

most recent Pew Research Center data. Some of these students have stories like
Rivera-Sarmiento’s. However, no one is certain how broad the school-to-deportation
pipeline is since there are no quantitative studies. Advocates suspect it happens more
often than is reported.

A dramatic increase in school security measures since the 1999 Columbine High
School shooting has multiplied young immigrants’ vulnerability. In the intervening
years, the number of SROs on K–12 campuses has increased by 50 percent, according
to a February 2018 Immigrant Legal Resource Center report.

Schools inadvertently participate in the school-to-deportation pipeline with zero-

tolerance policies and the use of SROs. In California, for example, a teen who’d fled
abuse in Mexico is at risk of having his green card application denied because a
teacher found a small amount of marijuana on him—a federal offense on school
premises. He was arrested by the SRO and given a ticket, which he must report in
special immigrant juvenile status and green card applications.

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In a smaller but growing number of instances, schools may be directly involved.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona, in 2013 a 15-
year-old Arizona student was interrogated by school officials, then handed over to
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials after being accused of
stealing school property.

Members of the coalition Organizing Network for Education (ONE Houston) have
been pushing for alternatives to policing in Houston schools and are working to
prevent other students from experiencing what Rivera-Sarmiento is going
through.“If I think back on my adolescence, a fight was not something that would end
up with you getting arrested,” says Catlin Goodrow, an educator and ONE Houston
leader. “We really have criminalized a lot of adolescents and that’s much more
serious for kids of color.” Rivera-Sarmiento’s immigration attorney, Brandon Roché,
became concerned about the case because it comes on the heels of the passage of SB4
—a Texas law that requires law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.

"I felt that, whatever the consequences may have been for
me helping the student, it was going to be worth it."

He said Rivera-Sarmiento’s detention is the most direct case of the school-to-

deportation pipeline he’s handled.

“My first impression was, ‘It sounds like a compelling case,’” Roché says. “He is a kid
who had a 3.4 GPA. He’d never been in any trouble at all in school. All of the teachers
and counselors at school told me right away he was a model student.”

Rivera-Sarmiento’s peers were in his corner as well. Hundreds of students staged a

walkout in protest of his detention. As of this writing, Rivera-Sarmiento is out on
bond and awaits the ruling of an immigration judge—a process that could take
months or even years.

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Cortez Downey, a college success adviser at Austin High School, raised money for
Rivera-Sarmiento’s legal fees, penned an editorial for the local newspaper and spoke
openly about his dismay about Houston Independent School District’s (HISD)
protocols regarding SROs.

“There isn’t a defined policy. That’s what the problem is,” Downey says. “There are no
clear guidelines on what resource officers are supposed to do in these situations.
What happens to this student could set a precedent for what happens to the rest of
our students. I felt that, whatever the consequences may have been for me helping
the student, it was going to be worth it.”

Rethinking Discipline
Advocates like ONE Houston’s Goodrow say SROs shouldn’t be allowed to arrest
students for minor infractions and should provide a different system for arrests that
would include family communication before a student is removed from campus.

“We really have the know-how now with restorative justice and mood behavioral
support to make sure that kids aren’t being arrested, but I think that we really haven’t
had the will,” Goodrow says. “HISD is spending $18 million on police officers, but
they’re spending a tiny fraction of that on social workers, for extracurricular
activities and college readiness. So, it’s really about what we have the will and
priorities to do.” Schools often struggle to find balance. In the era of school mass
shootings, how do they protect students without doing harm?

“I think this has been a real challenge lately because safety is on everyone’s mind
after Parkland, after Santa Fe, and so people are talking about having more armed
officers in schools,” says Caroline Duble, a statewide engagement manager at ACLU
of Texas and ONE Houston leader. “We really need to open the conversation about
how, [for] students of marginalized identities … that might make them feel less safe
versus more safe.”

HISD released a statement addressing its policy following Rivera-Sarmiento’s arrest,

stating that it “has not used district resources to assist in deportation actions and we
do not report students to ICE.”

District officials contend that “students are and will continue to be safe in our
classrooms.”

However, some educators believe the school failed Rivera-Sarmiento because leaders
didn’t explicitly consider how contact with SROs could harm undocumented
students.

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“Although HISD itself may not be cooperating with ICE, by handing them over to
Harris County Jail, HISD is putting our students in a position where they can
interact with ICE and ultimately face deportation,” Downey says. “The very system
that allows undocumented students to be handled this way is the same system that
also disproportionately criminalizes our black students. So, this isn’t simply an
immigrant issue or a brown issue. This is very much an issue for all our students of
families of color.”

The Uptick Of “Crimmigration”

In “School to Deportation Pipeline,” Laila Hlass, professor of practice at Tulane
University School of Law, writes that gang affiliation accusations are “the next
frontier in ‘crimmigration.’”

This term was coined by legal scholar Juliet Stumpf in 2006.

“In part, it’s used to describe the way that the immigration enforcement system has,
over the last 20 years, taken on many aspects of the criminal justice system, so it’s
become more and more punitive,” Hlass says.

Undocumented students are increasingly being accused of having ties to gangs,

pushing them into the school-to-deportation pipeline. School incident reports often
make their way into federal immigration investigations, helping to build deportation
cases.

"While extolling an undocumented person’s moral

character, community service and work history may be
great defenses, any report from law enforcement is still a
red flag to an immigration judge."

Kyle Morishita, a Nevada-based immigration attorney, says this targeting has been
commonplace for some time, as federal officials work to address gang influence
stemming from Central American countries.

“But I think it gets a lot more attention based on the president focusing on gangs and
trying to portray a lot of immigrants as gang members,” he says. “It just adds to the
national hysteria.”

In the 1990s, Congress expanded statutes that created more criminal grounds for
deportation. Hlass says it incentivized large, for-profit detention centers, mimicking
the mass incarceration state. Today, more local law enforcement agencies collaborate
with immigration officials.

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President Barack Obama made gangs an immigration enforcement priority during

his administration. What seems to be new is the scale and willingness to use these
allegations in immigration proceedings. Allegations are usually based on vague
standards, such as certain types and colors of clothing, tattoos, friends and family
members. In 2017, the ACLU brought suit against ICE for illegally detaining
teenagers in Long Island, New York. Officers claimed the teens were members of the
gang MS-13, but offered little evidence other than the youths’ appearance.

Immigration officials can consider almost anything in immigration court.

“That’s another issue of why people say school resource officers are difficult to have,”
Morishita says, “because if they simply write some type of allegation that the person
might be in a gang, and it might be noted in that report, that could come out in
immigration court even if there’s no proof.”

Fighting gang affiliation allegations is difficult, especially if the allegations are made
in school. Immigrants usually aren’t aware they’ve been labeled or included in a
federal gang database, making it nearly impossible to prepare witnesses and other
defenses in court.While extolling an undocumented person’s moral character,
community service and work history may be great defenses, any report from law
enforcement is still a red flag to an immigration judge.

IMPLICATIONS OF INCREASED “CRIMMIGRATION”

Dennis Rivera-Sarmiento’s case may also yield consequences for his mother and
siblings, all of whom fled Honduras in 2013. He’s been advised that they could be on
ICE’s radar. But the implications of policing in schools, layered with immigration
enforcement and hateful rhetoric targeting immigrants, affects far more than
undocumented individuals.

“The anxiety goes beyond students who are just undocumented to students who have
all kinds of identities that are currently being marginalized,” says Catlin Goodrow,
who has taught elementary and middle school students. “I’ve had kids ask me, ‘Why
does the president hate me?’ So, kids who were born in the United States that might
be of Mexican heritage, they also feel like there’s a threat to them.”

For students who are undocumented, related stress can manifest in behaviors that
might be misinterpreted as discipline problems. American Psychological Association
studies have shown that immigrant youth, particularly those who enter the United

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States as unaccompanied minors, have higher rates of anxiety, depression and post-
traumatic stress disorder.

Viridiana Carrizales is co-founder and CEO of ImmSchools, an organization that

provides resources and support to immigrant students. As an immigrant from
Mexico, she knows firsthand how the fear of deportation negatively affects these
students.

“Undocumented students experience so much pain, fear and so much trauma,” says
Carrizales, who is now a U.S. citizen. “An educator who does not have a relationship
with their students is only going to see a kid who is misbehaving or disengaged.”

Looking Forward
Roché says all options are on the table for Rivera-Sarmiento, including seeking
asylum. The government may grant asylum if there is a reasonable fear of
persecution in the immigrant’s home country due to race, religion, nationality,
political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The danger level is often
higher in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Asylum applications from these
countries, known as the Northern Triangle, have increased by more than 25 percent
between 2016 and 2017, adding to a growing backlog, and being granted asylum on the
basis of violent threat is quite difficult if the threat comes from the private sector,
e.g., gang members or abusive spouses.

While Rivera-Sarmiento is from the Northern Triangle and has been an ideal
student, his character assessment won’t necessarily save him from deportation.

“Immigration-wise, they don’t care about that,” Roché says. “They don’t care if you’re
a good person, if you’ve never been in trouble, at least nowadays. With the current
administration, it’s all irrelevant.”

Meanwhile in Houston, the work continues. Downey and other ONE Houston
activists say educators must explicitly support undocumented students.

“If I believe that one of my students does not belong in this country, how can I
honestly say that I am going to give them the same level of care and support and level
of education that I would give a student who is a United States citizen?” Downey asks.
“My challenge for educators is to question their implicit bias.”

Work also continues for Rivera-Sarmiento. He was accepted to at least three colleges
and sets his eyes on the University of Houston-Downtown, where he hopes to study

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computer science. Whether he’ll be able to do so depends on how judges view his
participation in the altercation with his classmate.

Days before his high school graduation, he reflected on how the public may view him
following local and national news reports about him.

“I feel like they were saying things that made me look bad,” he says. “And not only me,
but the people that come from other countries, just like me. I feel like they were
trying to make another picture of me. But that is not the real me. I don’t think that
I’m a bad person.”

Dillard is a staff writer for Teaching Tolerance. Lauryn Mascareñaz contributed

research for this story.

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