The rule that is supposed to keep immigration agents away from New York City public school kids is real, and it is strict: federal immigration officers cannot enter a city school without a judge-signed judicial warrant, the Department of Education does not consent to ICE coming in, and principals are not allowed to give that consent either. So far, by the DOE’s own account, no ICE agent has actually walked into a city school. What the teachers who rallied in Lower Manhattan are describing is that the protection ends at the front door, and the danger is parked on the sidewalk on the other side of it.
On June 4, about 100 educators, parents, and immigrant advocates gathered on the steps of Tweed Courthouse, the DOE’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, to demand the city write down a clear set of protocols for what school staff are supposed to do when immigration enforcement shows up near a building, as Brooklyn Paper reported from the rally. They delivered a petition with more than 2,200 signatures to a representative from the Schools Chancellor’s office, amNewYork reported. The crowd’s central message, from organizer and Sunset Park teacher Caitlin Cahill of the United Federation of Teachers’ Movement of Rank and File Educators, was that the gap is paralyzing: “Teachers and principals have had their hands tied, unable to help in the ways that we know are right and necessary,” she said, per Brooklyn Paper.
The scene that set this off is in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Julia Garland, an elementary school teacher there, said ICE vehicles have repeatedly appeared near several nearby schools during the morning drop-off window, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. “It was scary. Parents were walking their children into school, knowing ICE was right there. In some cases, they had to walk right next to the confirmed ICE vehicles with ICE agents sitting in them, and no staff at the schools knew what to do,” Garland said. “They usually target adult men who are alone, so if you are a loving father walking your child to school after you drop them off, you are in real danger.”
That window matters because of who the agents tend to take, and where the school’s authority runs out. Inside the building, the DOE’s official immigration guidance is unambiguous: “NYCPS does not consent to non-local law enforcement accessing school facilities in any circumstances, and principals and other school personnel may not give consent.” Staff are told to get the officer’s ID, take a copy of any warrant, ask the officer to wait outside, and immediately call the school system’s lawyers before anyone is allowed in. On the public sidewalk a parent crosses to reach that door, none of that applies.
Garland told a follow-up briefing that this is not hypothetical. “Back in February, two mornings in a row, right before school arrival began, suspicious occupied cars were spotted next to elementary schools,” she said, per City Limits, which reported the cars circled the blocks around the schools for roughly two hours. City Council Member Alexa Avilés, who represents Sunset Park, described the pattern as waves rather than constant presence: “There were months where it was daily activity, and then it’s kinda a little quiet,” she said. “Even if there’s spaces [in time] between the actual arrests, people are still very unnerved.”
The number of children exposed is large. The Center for Migration Studies estimates that about 267,000 New York City children live in a mixed-status household, meaning at least one family member is undocumented, a figure City Limits cited in its coverage of the protocol fight. Avilés put the same math in front of the crowd at the rally: 37 percent of New York City residents are immigrants, she noted, so “we could do the math and conjecture that the majority of public school students are impacted by what is happening here, and these egregious, abhorrent policies,” per amNewYork. “It is traumatizing for the students and their families to watch community members, family members, be brutalized, dehumanized, and kidnapped in plain sight,” she said. “This sickens me to my core.”
The teachers are clear that this is not a budget request. Garland and her colleagues say they are not seeking additional funding, but a firm, written set of steps for school staff to follow if students or staff are approached by federal immigration enforcement. Per City Limits, the petition asks the DOE to create guidance for how schools should respond to ICE presence inside or outside a building, to set up “safe passage” arrangements for students, to offer parents a safe place to wait during enforcement activity, and to put rapid family-notification procedures in place when enforcement is confirmed nearby. Eduardo Antonetti of the Internationals Network for Public Schools framed it as a training problem: “Training on how to respond to these issues must be included in the routine safety training,” he said, per Brooklyn Paper.
The DOE responded. Deputy Chancellor Flavia Puello-Perdomo accepted the petition outside Tweed and told the crowd the existing policy holds. “Our policies have not changed. Our commitment is not wavering,” she said, per Brooklyn Paper. At the later briefing she went further, telling City Limits, “We’re actively working to strengthen our protocols, particularly as they relate to interactions with non-local law enforcement, ICE.” UFT President Michael Mulgrew kept it to the stakes for kids: “Our students see their schools as a safe place,” he said, per Brooklyn Paper. A 16-year-old student at the rally told City Limits, “We shouldn’t have to go to school, afraid or on edge, just to think that something’s going to happen to our family.”
The state and city rules already draw a hard line at the building. Under New York’s Executive Order 170.1, the state Attorney General’s office says, civil immigration arrests “may only be executed within state facilities, such as schools, when accompanied by a judicial warrant,” and an administrative warrant signed by ICE itself “is not a judicial warrant and does not provide probable cause.” The Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision guarantees every kid a public education regardless of immigration status, and the AG says schools may not even ask for a Social Security number at enrollment. All of that protects the child at the desk. None of it reaches the father on the sidewalk at 7 a.m., and that is what the teachers are pointing at. They are not asking the city to invent a new right. They are asking it to write down what staff do in the gap the existing rules leave open.
This was not a one-off. Back in January 2025, the NYCLU and Make the Road New York sent a letter to schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos urging her to codify the updated protocol as a regulation and to require staff to notify parents of any warrant or subpoena unless explicitly prohibited, a year and a half before teachers were standing on the courthouse steps making nearly the same demand. The distinction matters: the no-ICE-without-a-judicial-warrant rule currently lives in DOE guidance, not in a binding numbered regulation, which is what advocates and now teachers want the DOE to write down and lock in.
If you live in Sunset Park or anywhere in Community School District 15, and you want to know your exact rights at the schoolhouse door or push the DOE to publish the protocol the teachers are asking for, the DOE’s own immigration guidance for schools spells out what staff must do today, and the state Attorney General’s guidance on immigrant students’ rights lays out the judicial-warrant rule in plain language you can hand to a principal. Avilés represents Sunset Park on the City Council and takes constituent comment on exactly this fight. The protection is real inside the building. The argument now is about the twenty feet of sidewalk in front of it.
Featured image: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
