Immigrants are people, and everything you, personally, can do to help them makes a difference.
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Of all the problems facing our nation right now — and there are many— one of the most dire is the situation with our immigrant population. This is not something that is far away from you. In every community, immigrants are being harassed by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by alt-right conservatives, sometimes by their own neighbors.
Here in Florida, sheriffs and police have been turned into arms of ICE. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s agreement with the federal government, they are empowered to arrest and send immigrants for processing and deportation to regions from which many have fled in fear of their lives.
Locally, our children are under attack. Our school system sent out a memo informing parents, teachers, and administrators that the schools will comply fully with state and federal law and allow officers to remove students from our K-12 schools without a warrant and without parental knowledge or consent.
That memo came out in February. Since then, hundreds of concerned residents have pleaded with their local school board to clarify the new policy, to no avail. Given my journalistic bent, this week’s “small things” will concentrate on how to draw attention to these policy changes in your area by outlining what we are doing in my hometown to try to reverse the policy allowing ICE full access to our schools here.
1. Meet with advocacy groups that are fighting unfair immigration policy in your area.
In a previous week’s column, I introduced you to the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative (GINI). Back then, I had helped that local organization craft a press release about their objection to what I call the “ICE memo.” This time, they shared with me a sound-only video that had been sent to them by an anonymous source. It had been recorded secretly at one of the meetings where the school’s entire staff had been called into a room to view a video on their mandated participation in the school board’s ICE plan.
Not being journalists, the group didn’t know how best to use this recording to inform the public about what was happening in their community’s schools. I sat with it for a while, trying to determine what would be the most effective way to release this disturbing information.
2. Research the primary sources. In this case, school policies.
My first thought was that I needed to get a better understanding of the new policy and its implications for students and parents. So I did some research. The following paragraphs sound a little wonky, but if you want to fight for your children, you need to know the specific situation in your own school system.
Under the heading Student Assignment to Schools, the memo issued by our local school board states that its goal is to minimize potential challenges to enrollment. It lists specifically homelessness and foster care, but it makes no mention of immigration status by name. It does note that our schools do not request or maintain immigration-status information.
The student interviews and contact section states that “all employees and agents of the Board have an affirmative duty to cooperate with and comply with investigations relating to child abuse, abandonment, and neglect, or an alleged unlawful sexual offense involving a child. The building administrators may also assist authorities in their investigations of other violations of law in which students are alleged to be involved.”
Apparently, immigration status is being lumped into “other violations of the law.”
In the section headed Student Records we get some solace: “The Board recognizes the need to safeguard students’ privacy and restrict access to students’ personally identifiable information. All material in each permanent cumulative educational record shall be confidential, in accordance with the law and this policy.”
So, law enforcement will have no access to student records, only access to the students themselves.
None of these policies apply overtly to immigration. The word immigration is never used. The school board appears to be refitting old policies designed for other issues to deal with the new ICE mandates on immigration.
The memo also has some very squishy language at the end. In bullets, it says that administrators will request identification, request permission to contact parents, request to be present during an interview with the student, etc. That’s a lot of requesting. Nowhere does it say those requests need to be granted or what recourse teachers or administrators have if the requests are denied.
However, at the very end, the tone changes: “All district employees must comply with directives from law enforcement officers. Failure to do so may result in legal consequences, including arrest for tampering with, interfering with or obstructing a law enforcement investigation or law enforcement official.”
So, that language is clear enough: In any future confrontations, ICE rules.
3. Find inside sources and information and let them talk.
Once I had an understanding of what I was dealing with, and how the story could take shape, I needed to talk with the anonymous source of the sound-only video. I told my contact at GINI that I would not be writing or publishing anything without this person’s explicit consent, and I gave GINI my phone number to give to the source. When dealing with something as delicate as this, it is better to have the source come to you if possible. They feel more in control and comfortable that way, and you are a lot more likely to gain the trust and the information you need.
The source did call me, and we spoke for a while. I asked who was in attendance at the meeting where they showed the video, in what school and room this was, when it happened, what people’s reactions were, what the administration said about the video and more. She was very open with me. Given this conversation, she’ll be more likely to talk with a reporter when it is time, even if it is only on background.
4. Write down questions and concerns about what is unclear in the primary sources. Get a sense of the story at hand.
As I went through the school documents, I took notes, copying and pasting sections, adding my questions, and organizing. It’s similar to assembling an outline for research. I used the outline to help others formulate a pitch to editors and reporters, since I won’t be writing it myself.
First, I spell out the problem behind the problem: that the policies the schools are marshalling were never meant to deal with immigration. Next, I give guidance on whom to talk to about the story: principals, school board members, the public information officer, etc. And finally, I suggest the questions I would ask them, beginning with: Why? Why is the school board doing this?
School administrators have been saying their hands are tied by state law. But there’s another possibility that could serve as the basis for further questions: During Trump’s first term, when our school system stood up to DeSantis, it was severely punished. There’s a persistent rumor that school officials today fear that if they resist ICE, the school district will lose its accreditation.
We know DeSantis has ousted elected members of our local board and appointed his own loyalists at least once. So the threat of strong-arming by the state cannot be ruled out. (Of course, any reporters who want to pursue this storyline will have to verify it to their own satisfaction.) I conclude with a reminder of how important all this is: Nothing less than the future of our children is at stake.
And here’s the kicker: The schools are telling their staff that they must allow ICE agents to remove children from classrooms and there is nothing that parents or teachers can do about it.
5. Use the Freedom of Information Act.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows members of the public to request access to records from specific federal agencies. Those agencies must disclose any information requested under this act, unless it falls under various categories of sensitive information.
So with a FOIA request, we were able to access any school emails that had the words “Immigration Customs Enforcement” or ICE in them.
The resulting records – 500 pages worth – came in a large .pdf file. The entries were not organized in any way, nor formatted for easy reading. The texts were different sizes, the pages were not uniform, sometimes words overlapped each other in one small vertical line, four letters each.
Basically, it’s not the government’s job to make it easy for you to read the FOIA material. But it is their job to give it to you. So we got it. You can too.
6. Make the reporters’ jobs as easy as possible to gain as much traction as possible.
Any time you are pitching a story to the media, you need to make their job as easy as possible. Make it seem like they can get the most bang out of it for the least effort. It has to stack up against all the stories they’re considering for that day or week – and keep in mind that media outlets are typically understaffed and overworked. And they routinely ignore a lot of incoming emails. In this case, when I got the 500 pages of school emails, I went through them myself to filter out the garbage. I made an index, marking page numbers where relevant information appeared, providing dates, names, contact info, and brief summaries of the key entries. This took a long time. But it makes the material much more likely to appeal to the reporter you want to get interested in the story.
7. Contact reporters and editors about the story.
Given my current career, I can’t write the story locally because I work for a television station in the region, and it would be a conflict of interest. So instead of pitching this story to an editor as something I wanted to write, I pitched it to staff reporters at regional and national newspapers as a story tip. I did not use the regular news tip line. Instead, I contacted former students of mine and editors I knew to compile a list of personal contacts for the people I was pitching.
This is the benefit of having been in the business for a long while. Even if you don’t know someone, you probably know someone who does know them. With that preliminary networking, my pitch was taken more seriously than it would have been otherwise. It looked something like this:
Good afternoon,
A former student of mine, [redacted], gave me your information.
I have a story I’d like to run by you from up here in Gainesville.
It might be something but will require some investigation to really materialize. It has to do with our local school system and their policy about allowing ICE to remove children from school with no warrant and no parental consent. I can help investigate if y’all are interested, and already have a bootleg video of what they showed teachers in a hush- hush manner, and some sources.
I would be happy to help facilitate if you wanted to report it or knew someone who did. I don’t want to bore you with details but if this sounds like something you would like to hear more about, let me know!
I’ve got a bunch of sources I’d be happy to share, and I can send along the memo and the school policies and the video if you are interested in moving forward.
Through this pitch, I got interest from two statewide publications. We’ll see what happens next.
This fight is far from over. With summer break looming, the hope is that reporters can investigate parental concerns and get school administrators to renegotiate their relationship with ICE before the new school year starts. This will be continued. See you next week.
Past weeks of “One Small Thing” can be found here.