Los Angeles Teachers’ Union Defends Students From Trump’s Anti-Migrant Crackdown
On April 7, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to enter two elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). According to LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, the agents were trying to contact five students who they alleged entered the U.S. without documentation, and they lied to school officials by claiming that the students’ families gave them permission to contact the students. (“Any assertions that officers lied are false,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Truthout in a statement.)
It was the first attempt by federal agents to enter a Los Angeles public school during Donald Trump’s intensifying assault on immigrants. The agents were turned away by school administrators, but the event left some educators rattled and came amid growing fears within L.A.’s immigrant community about the safety of attending schools.
At the same time, students and communities are putting up strong resistance to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, and a key backbone of this resistance is coming from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the city’s mighty union of educators.
Across the U.S., from Chicago to the Twin Cities, teachers and their unions are stepping up to protect and defend immigrant students and their communities. This organizing isn’t new, but urgency is growing with Trump’s extremist policies. Leading the way are left-led teacher unions with mobilized rank-and-file bases and “common good” strategies that wield union bargaining toward social justice for communities, including defending immigrant rights.
UTLA is one of those unions. Maria Miranda was a LAUSD classroom teacher for 21 years and a community school coordinator for two years before becoming UTLA’s elementary vice president and the point officer on the union’s immigration justice work. Truthout spoke with Miranda about UTLA’s defense of immigrant students and immigrant communities.
Derek Seidman: To start, can you discuss how you’re feeling in this moment?
Maria Miranda: Fear is not new for us. I grew up as an undocumented student in LAUSD. I lived the reality of having to hide when we didn’t know who was knocking at the door. I see that happening now with our students. They are very afraid to walk to school or to be home alone. They are afraid that their parents are at risk.
I grew up as an undocumented student in LAUSD. I lived the reality of having to hide when we didn’t know who was knocking at the door. I see that happening now with our students.
We had hoped that schools would remain safe zones for our students. Unfortunately, the new administration rescinded those guidelines. Just last week, we were in Sacramento supporting a bill proposing that schools be safe zones again. The mental health of our students is in jeopardy. A student can’t learn if they can’t show up to school and feel safe.
One of our biggest worries just became a reality. DHS visited two of our elementary schools looking for students. Luckily, the district followed its own protocols, and the agents eventually abandoned the premises without the students. But it was very bold of them to show up to a school, where students are supposed to be safe, asking for them, and terrorizing everybody around them.
I think everyone’s on edge right now. I’m getting a lot of calls from educators thrown off by what happened. We prepared our members if something like this happened, but I think everyone was hoping it wouldn’t happen, especially not at the elementary level. We know that this is our reality now.
What is the union doing right now to protect immigrant students?
Our educators are ready to protect and defend and wrap our arms around the immigrant community. We are using the strength and resources of our union to organize and support the community. We have eight areas in UTLA with about 39,000 members. Every area has some level of organizational structure to support our immigrant communities. We feel prepared in every area.
Before her term expired, one of our school board members, Jackie Goldberg, brought back a resolution from 2017 that declared our schools a sanctuary place for LGBTQ+ and immigrant students, regardless of status. We conducted a training on that reaffirmed policy, and the district itself has to train all staff members at school sites on that policy.
We emphasized to our membership that they should meet with their principals to make sure every site knows what to do in case ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] shows up. We created posters spelling out district policy to pin up on the UTLA board at every school site. These posters indicate who to call, what to ask, and who within the district needs to be notified immediately.
Our educators are ready to protect and defend and wrap our arms around the immigrant community. We are using the strength and resources of our union to organize and support the community.
We’re providing information through new structures that we have built within UTLA. We have what we call our immigrant justice area team leads who are trained in rapid response. They are asked to notify myself and the staff here at UTLA whenever there is an ICE sighting reported at a school site. We distribute information to area meetings to inform different areas and chapter leaders at every site.
We also have Know Your Rights trainings for any member who wishes to attend. We have informational sheets for our members to share among each other so that they can meet and discuss. We’ve tried to engage our members with materials and information so that everyone is as informed as possible.
How are you working with families and students directly?
We’re making sure that our members know what resources are available for families. We had a family preparedness training so that educators can provide guidance to families who might need it, such as help with a caregiver affidavit. We’ve opened up our Know Your Rights and family preparedness trainings to the community so that parents and community members could join. We have pamphlets that we leaflet to parents at school sites. For the first time, parents are taking multiple copies with them to share with their family members, friends and neighbors.
We also had social emotional training led by two principal social workers who shared with educators what can be done to support the needs of our students who are going through this very difficult moment. We’ve had educators share classroom lessons with secondary and elementary school teachers on how they can discuss the issues within the school setting, because students do ask. When I was in the kindergarten classroom, the little ones would bring up concerns. We want our educators to know how to address some of these issues that are age appropriate for the children.
The older students also need resources, because we do have unaccompanied minors in our school sites who have different types of status and who need resources at school sites. We have a visual campaign with posters and buttons to tell students they are welcomed here.
Can you talk about UTLA’s work with community and labor groups?
We have neighborhood walks where we distribute door hangers. Every school site is going out and leaving these if the families are not home. We already distributed red cards to our members, and we also have red cards in many different languages available for the community. All of our items are on our union website. We are working very closely with nonprofit organizations such as Carecen, CHIRLA, Rescate, KIWA, CLUE, California Immigrant Policy Center, and a few other groups, and labor partners like SEIU 721, SEIU USWW and SEIU 2015.
Labor partners are coming together to support our immigrant community here in Los Angeles. We all meet very regularly. UTLA is part of the leadership group of the different labor partners and community organizations that come together, and we’re also part of the rapid response team. We are the leads on this work in the San Fernando Valley and in the southeast cities.
If there is an ICE sighting, we show up and confirm that it’s happening, and we provide Know Your Rights services to impacted folks in the area. Then we notify the rapid response network so that the legal side can provide services for families. CHIRLA has done a great job coordinating a lot of this work, and we’re very happy to have our members assist them to make sure that the rapid response network is successful.
Why is it important for labor unions like UTLA to be doing this work?
I think it’s two things. We care about the community and we love the families that we serve. I myself taught in the same community where I grew up. We see ourselves in the students and the parents. We value our immigrant community and understand the struggles they’ve endured leaving their whole life behind to start anew and find a better future for themselves and their children.
We need people out in the streets to make sure that folks are not robbed of their rights. We need to stand up for each other and stand up for the democracy of this country.
As a union, we also know that this is an attack on public education. It’s an attack on unions. They are trying to dismantle the Department of Education. They are attacking our public education system, which is supposed to be accessible to any person, regardless of immigration status. If they succeed, they will be destroying something that has been beneficial to communities for many years. As educators, we cannot stand by and do nothing.
We know that if they instill enough fear in our community, folks will leave. Our schools will lose enrollment and funding and resources with that. And of course, losing students means losing teachers, and losing teachers means losing schools. The whole system will just crumble. We do not want our schools to be privatized.
What are the most important things you’ve learned doing this organizing?
We need to continue talking to our communities so that we are not desensitized to all this. We can’t begin to see all this pain as normal, because then there will be no action against it. The more we hear these stories, the more we have to fight for each other.
As union leaders, we have to communicate with the district and to continue trying to collaborate with them, even if the district shuts its door. We have to reach out to the community and work with the immigrant rights groups doing the work that have expertise from advocating for immigrant rights for many years.
Everyone needs to know that there is a place for them in this work. Even if you’re new, you can learn and jump into advocacy. You can stand up and say you’re a DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] recipient, or you’re mixed-status, or you’ve suffered family separation, and this is what it did to us. We need things like that so that we constantly see that this is a reality for our community
With today’s challenges, what keeps you motivated?
I recently got a shirt that says “We Migrate Because We Refuse to Die.” That’s reality for many people. The majority of folks who are here are here because they have to be. My love of my students and their families keeps me going. Having been an undocumented student myself, and now, as an adult, seeing how proud my parents are to see their dream being realized by my work — that keeps me going.
I’m inspired that our union is fighting and staying strong. We put ourselves on the line with our Bargaining for the Common Good demands. In 2019, we won common good demands that supported our community and our families. In 2023, we saw our MOU [memorandum of understanding] on immigrant student support, and now we have this as a new article in our bargaining proposal. (Editor’s note: this new article contains proposals declaring LAUSD schools as sanctuary spaces, a LAUSD/UTLA District Immigrant Support Committee, efforts to expand funding for services for immigrant families and partnerships with legal organizations, mandatory training for all staff and administrators on LAUSD Sanctuary Schools Policy, support for Know Your Rights Trainings, free meeting space on school campuses for immigrant rights organizations, support for employees or students who need immigration-related leaves or absences, and more.)
All this work strengthens our contract and strengthens our schools. I think that’s what gives me hope — that we’re actually making a difference. We’re codifying things. We’re letting families know that educators have a place in their community, not just the classroom, and that families’ voices are being heard when we’re at the bargaining table.
Don’t get me wrong. After the election in November, I had a few days where I shut my door. I was processing. But after those tough couple of weeks, I’ve been super focused. What are we going to do? How do we give our families hope? How do we ensure that they know that there are strong unions supporting them?
We need to talk to people about what’s happening, including family members; people who are not typically active and political really need to be getting involved, because we need a movement. We need people out in the streets to make sure that folks are not robbed of their rights. We need to stand up for each other and stand up for the democracy of this country.