Concerned community members and students are pressuring the Summit School District to implement a policy that offers protections for undocumented students amid deportation threats.

Nearly half a dozen people made a plea to the district at a Board of Education meeting on Thursday, Nov. 21, to follow in the steps of the Roaring Fork School District and institute a policy prohibiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from taking any actions on district property without a valid warrant. 

Roaring Fork officials solidified its policy in May, just over a year after an incident where border patrol agents were invited to present at a Glenwood Springs High School career expo, which officials said violated a community trust put in place in 2011.

Public commenters at the Nov. 21 meeting said their fears were spurred by President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out the “largest deportation” in the U.S. history. 

“Though schools are listed as ‘protected areas’ in (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s) current internal guidelines … it is possible this guidance will change or not be followed,” Mountain Dreamers executive director Peter Bakken said.

Bakken and others affiliated with Mountain Dreamers, a nonprofit focused on immigration, are reviving a 2017 effort to pass this resolution. Summit High School senior Chris Ortiz, president of the Mountain Dreamers club at the school, clarified the policy wouldn’t be able to outright protect undocumented students. Yet, it would require training for district staff members to be able handle situations where agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seek to enter district property and ensure students’ right to learn in a safe environment was maintained.

It also mandates the Summit School District not collect or maintain any information about students’ immigration status and bars staff members from asking any student about their immigration status or that of their families.

Ortiz introduced himself to the board as a first-generation student and a son to immigrant parents. He said while he has citizenship, some of his friends do not and are living in fear. 

Danelle Hicks, pre-collegiate program director for the district and club sponsor for Mountain Dreamers,  said she thinks now has to be the time where schools take a stand on the matter.  

“I am a person that takes people at their word, and if someone says they will carry out the largest mass deportation in history, I will believe them,” she said. “I would rather be prepared for that to happen, instead of scrambling after it happens. And it could happen.”

Board of education members, per regulations, could not respond to comments made at the meeting, but Superintendent Tony Byrd could. He said officials will review the policy at a Dec. 19 meeting. 

He drew attention to the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe, which affirmed schools cannot deny enrollment to students on the basis of immigration alongside while also touching on other state protections which prohibit discrimination in schools. 

Byrd said in addition to supporting the policy campaigned for by public commenters at the Nov. 19, he’ll be looking at other policies which are working for schools across the country and added he is also looking into training for staff on how to support students.