‘I was the last person in the US that he knew’: Teachers face the deportation crackdown taking students away

By Sunlen Serfaty, CNN

(CNN) — Over the last year, four of Kristen Schoettle’s students have been detained by ICE and taken roughly 1,500 miles from Detroit to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

“The most emotional moment for me personally is the first time it happened,” she said, recalling how she witnessed one student being taken away in handcuffs by immigration agents while their class was on a school field trip last May.

The next few times, Schoettle knew which lawyers to call, whom to inform and which steps to take. She has worked with families to track down birthdates, hunt for contacts in foreign countries and learn about court proceedings in immigration detention.

And while her students were detained, Schoettle became one of the primary adults that the teens could trust on the outside world and spoke to them daily, becoming de facto therapist, legal adviser, and friend to her students as they navigated their time behind bars.

“It’s been about a lot more than just the classroom and the curriculum and the management,” Schoettle said. “It’s been huge. It’s way bigger than what education and teaching used to look like.”

As an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, Schoettle has seen up close how President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has impacted vulnerable students.

And she is not alone. Many teachers across the country are finding themselves taking on roles far beyond the bounds of school to support students, undocumented or otherwise, facing immigration challenges, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, told CNN.

“Thousands are fearful and are outraged by what’s going on and scared for their students,” she said. “Teachers care about their students and their students’ families and they are really regardless of what their position is on immigration, regardless of whether they voted for Trump or didn’t.”

This month, the last of Schoeffle’s students to still be in detention, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was released.

Their reunion was bittersweet. Although he and two others who are also seeking asylum have returned home to Detroit, Schoeffle said, the student she witnessed being taken away in May was deported with his family.

“It’s crazy to think that I was the last person in the US that he knew, to see him before he left,” she said.

“I wish I had news for you”

Whenever her cell phone rang with a call from the area code 866, Schoettle knew exactly who would be on the line: One of her students was calling from Dilley.

With her own money, Schoettle bought credits for her students in detention so they could make phone calls and access the internet. They sometimes texted her using the video conferencing tool – Microsoft Teams – that their school uses.

Hopes, fears and details of lives in detention are revealed in their conversations and messages, mostly in Spanish, some of which were shared with CNN.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to return, miss,” one student wrote to her in December. “I’m sad…. I don’t want to be here,” they said.

“I’m not going to lie. Today I am a little sad. I miss all of you,” said another. “Are there people trying to help us? We want to get out of here, teacher.”

Often, the children were looking for practical guidance. The conversations centered around what could come next for them, and the students looked to her for answers.

“I wish I had news for you!” Schoettle replied to one of the students who was checking in. “I love you and we are still trying to make something happen. I still have hope, but we need something to happen before your court date in February.”

During that time, Schoettle was working to reach anyone who could help — lawyers, members of Congress or immigration advocates. She even said she would serve as a sponsor for one of the students to be released without their parent, with whom they were detained, if necessary.

Some messages describe the daily rhythms and routine of detention. Meals were at set times: breakfast at 7am, dinner at 5pm. Sometimes, there would be an art class to attend or a doctor’s appointment to go to.

At other times, the students, who Schoettle wrote to her just to express how they felt — and how badly they wanted out.

On the phone, they relayed to Schoettle “how the food isn’t good, how sometimes it’s maybe there’s bugs in it, maybe there’s mold on it, how the water is disgusting and people don’t drink it, how everything in the commissary is too expensive, how the conditions are bad,” she said. People got sick all the time, they told her.

Asked about these conditions, the facility, which is also known as Dilley Immigration Processing Center, referred CNN to a previous comment stating in part that it “work(s) every day to ensure the families in their care are safe, healthy and well.”

At one point, two of her students bumped into each other, not realizing until the moment that they had both been detained.

One was so shocked to see the other “she couldn’t even speak,” she told Schoettle.

“That sticks with me,” Schoettle said, “because the place that they should be together, seeing each other, is every day at school. But instead, they’re seeing each other in prison across the country.”

Empty seats in the classroom

The empty chairs in Schoettle’s classroom became unsettling symbols to the students that remained, all of whom had only arrived in the US in recent years and settled in Detroit.

Western International High School serves a diverse community of about 1,900 students; about one-fifth are immigrants, and many more — about 70% — are children of immigrants.

While her students were gone, there was “a heaviness that everyone, myself included, had to reckon with and had to think about every day,” Schoettle said. “They’re still on my roster. I’m still marking them absent,” and yet, “they’re not here.”

Her remaining students feared that “they could be next,” Schoettle said.

“I walk them through what they need to know. How can they protect themselves? Where shouldn’t they go, for example? What places are more, maybe, dangerous than others? How can you drive safely?”

But many have stopped coming to school, Schoettle said, and some have been asking to transfer to a virtual school or asking for teachers for schoolwork on Microsoft Teams. She estimates that 20% of her students this academic year have missed school out of fear for being detained.

“My classroom used to once be a place of joy and learning English and being with each other, but it’s definitely become more of a place of fear,” she said.

“I don’t want them to feel alone”

Schoettle doesn’t see things changing anytime soon. “With the constant threat that still exists in our city and throughout the country, there’s still the constant fear,” she said.

Last week, she led students in a walkout during school to protest ICE’s tactics in their community.

“This is not normal,” she said to the crowd of students gathered in front of their school. “This is our community being terrorized, and we are tired of it.”

Schoettle and other teachers, parents and community members have been working with the school board to provide support for students, such as safer transportation options and conducting “Know Your Rights” trainings to help people understand what rights they have if they are stopped by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That’s happening across the country, said Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers president. After hearing from members, the teachers’ union – the country’s second largest – has started webinar trainings to help educators respond to the moment. They are also providing emergency kits with whistles and distributing “Know Your Rights” literature.

For Schoettle, “it’s been about trying to get our kids out of ICE detention. It’s been about talking to parents, talking to lawyers, understanding the legal system.”

“I want them to know that people want them out. People are fighting for them, and people are going to continue to fight for them,” she said. “I don’t want them to feel alone.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the American Federation of Teachers as the country’s largest teachers’ union. It is the second largest.

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