At least six Seattle public schools sheltered in place after unconfirmed community reports of ICE activity in the city’s South End.
The confirmed schools included Mercer International Middle School, Cleveland STEM High School, Maple Elementary School, Dearborn Park International Elementary School, Beacon Hill International Elementary School, and Aki Kurose Middle School, according to Seattle Public Schools Chief of Staff Bev Redmond.
Redmond says several schools sheltered-in-place after these unconfirmed reports. Sheltering-in-place is different from lockdown—while exterior doors are locked, students are free to move between classrooms. The decisions were made on a school level and out of an abundance of caution, Redmond says.
Some schools may have stopped sheltering-in-place, while others will continue until the end of the school day. Redmond says the district is working to confirm additional details, and compile a list of the schools that sheltered-in-place.
Seattle Public Schools Safety and Security staff have been on site throughout the day and have not seen ICE. Staff remain on alert, Redmond says.
The Stranger has asked the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement if agents are in the area. The department has not responded.
Some schools may have stopped sheltering-in-place, while others will continue until the end of the school day. Redmond says the district is working to confirm additional details, and compile a list of the schools that sheltered-in-place.
School Board Director Joe Mizrahi says the potential of ICE activity was treated like any other threat to student safety, which, unfortunately, most students have experienced and run drills for all the time.
“But ICE is a pretty unique threat and we are in such a fast moving environment [that] we need to push to have a more clear protocol and make sure that teachers, students, families, and community understand it. Because there is a lot of the same and a lot different.”
Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa, who is running for King County Council District 2, said in a statement, “No one–no child, parent or educator, deserves to live in this kind of chaos and fear.”
Hasegawa first heard the reports of the shelter-in-place order from a friend with a child at Cleveland High School. Hasegawa’s children attend a daycare just blocks away. Hasegawa wants to see childcare centers partner with SPS to send out alerts to families if anything like this happens again.
But, she cautioned against spreading inaccurate information.
“As always, we must balance the need to keep our community members safe against the risk of causing undue fear or spreading misinformation,” Hasegawa said in a statement. “I will continue to share information as I receive it, and I’ll always take reasonable steps to verify any reports before I share them on my platforms.”
Texting from a hearing for the farm worker bill of rights and immigrant worker notification bills in Olympia, State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, who is running for the same seat as Hasegawa, wrote that the shelter in place has been lifted at Cleveland STEM High, and her daughter, a student at the school, joined students across the district to protest ICE “trying to intimidate our children while they should be focused on learning, targeting our children when their hard working parents are at work.”
The Stranger was unable to confirm with Cleveland STEM High that the shelter-in-place had been lifted.
Saldaña continued: “It is heartbreaking and maddening that kids and teachers had to shelter in place out of fear that they could be targeted by ICE. I’m thankful to Seattle Public Schools for their quick action to put families first.”
Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin, who represents District 2, writes in a statement that “schools should be safe, welcoming places for all, and it is heartbreaking that ICE is now creating such intense fear in schools. ICE’s activities are immoral, unconstitutional and antithetical to our democratic ideals. This is another dark stain in our nation’s history and those responsible must ultimately be held to account. We all have a moral duty to resist this tyranny.”
This article has been updated with additional detail since its original publication.
