\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>hree teachers drove through a quiet neighborhood in southern San Diego, the sun not yet fully up over the horizon. They drank coffee and talked about their jobs. The start of the school day was still an hour or two away.<\/p>\n Suddenly, mid-conversation, they spotted something: what appeared to be an <\/strong>undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, driving right past them.<\/p>\n To an untrained eye, the unmarked SUV didn\u2019t look out of place among the dozens of other cars lining the residential street. But the educators saw what many might miss: the completely tinted windows of the unmarked Dodge Durango (a popular choice for law enforcement), the small strip of lights near the front of the car, the steel prisoner partition faintly visible inside (dividing the front seat from the back). Sure enough, the SUV\u2019s driver picked up a handheld radio.<\/p>\n Watching this, high school teacher Marysol Duran clicked her own walkie talkie to life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have identified a potential,\u201d she reported to others in her unit, following closely behind. \u201cHe is on 39th and Gamma. We will keep close watch.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>High school teacher Marysol Duran coordinates with other teachers via walkie talkie on an October patrol for ICE.<\/span> Photograph: Amanda Ulrich\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Duran, and other members of her organization, are not just teachers. They\u2019re also members of the Association of Raza Educators, a group of activists that regularly patrols southern California streets to keep an eye out for ICE. When they spot undercover agents, who may be in the area conducting surveillance or actively planning to arrest or detain someone, they alert the surrounding community: via social media, group chats <\/strong>\u2013 and sometimes a giant megaphone.<\/p>\n The fall morning they spotted the Dodge Durango, the teachers were patrolling a several-mile radius near half a dozen local schools. That choice of location was intentional. Only two months before, at least four parents were arrested or detained by immigration officials near schools in San Diego county alone. <\/strong>Outside one Chula Vista elementary school, an undocumented mother, who had allegedly overstayed her visa, was arrested during morning drop-offs as her children watched from the car.<\/p>\n ICE\u2019s San Diego field office did not respond to several requests for comment regarding the suspected undercover vehicle or any other San Diego arrests near school sites.<\/p>\n In the US, children have the right to a free public education from kindergarten to 12th grade, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. Although immigration officers were previously limited in their ability to make arrests in or near \u201csensitive locations\u201d, like schools and churches, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded those Obama and Biden-era guidelines earlier this year.<\/p>\n So when the three teachers noticed the potential ICE agent in October, they turned their car around and followed. The Dodge parked and the teachers did, too. Juan Orozco, a high school counselor, watched from the driver\u2019s seat. Duran sat next to him, and Aremi Lopez, an elementary school teacher, clutched a megaphone in the backseat.<\/p>\n After a few minutes, the Dodge sped away without warning. The teachers drove after it.<\/p>\n \u201cBuenos d\u00edas, compa\u00f1eros<\/em>,\u201d Duran reported in a series of live social media updates. \u201cEstamos en la comunidad de Shelltown. Estamos aqu\u00ed reportando, parte de la Association de Raza Educadores y Uni\u00f3n del Barrio, y tenemos movimiento: un Dodge Durango. Gris<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n She immediately translated: \u201cWe are here reporting from Shelltown, San Diego. We have identified a Dodge Durango, grey, that has been surveilling our community.\u201d<\/p>\n Fear among students and parents across southern California is at an all-time high, particularly after the <\/strong>supreme court ruled <\/strong>earlier this fall that federal agents can stop and detain residents in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish, appearing Latino or working certain types of jobs. Now, there have been instances where students don\u2019t come to school because they, or their parents, are scared to leave the house, Orozco said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a state of fear, [whether you\u2019re a] citizen or not a citizen: plumber, professional, mother, grandma, everyone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we shouldn\u2019t live like that.\u201d<\/p>\n But teachers, and a handful of their students, are also quietly and consistently mobilizing in big and small ways: by hosting morning patrols near local schools, organizing know-your-rights seminars, and keeping each other informed about the presence of ICE.<\/p>\n \u201cWe said, \u2018Hell no, we have to resist,\u2019\u201d Orozco said. \u201cWe have to stand for dignity and protect this safe place for us: schools.\u201d<\/p>\n In the small library of a nearby San Diego high school, 14-year-old <\/strong>Azda* sat across from her sister, 19-year-old Guadalupe*. Behind them, many of the books on the shelves and posters on the wall had activist themes; an illustration of Che Guevara peeked out from the top shelf. In the hallway outside the library, a hand-painted banner <\/strong>read \u201ceducation not deportation\u201d. The school is located only a few miles from where the suspected undercover ICE vehicle was spotted a week prior.<\/p>\n While Azda just started her freshman year of high school, and Guadalupe her second year of college, the sisters often have more on their minds than other teenagers might.<\/p>\n Because of where they were born, Azda is a citizen, but Guadalupe is undocumented. They\u2019ve always worried that one day ICE may pick up their mother, who is also undocumented.<\/p>\n \u201cI do fear for her,\u201d Guadalupe said of her mother. \u201cBut not only just when she\u2019s dropping off her kids at school, it\u2019s every second of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Sisters Azda, left, and Guadalupe, right, come from a mixed-status family. Growing up, their mother, who is undocumented, had to prepare them for what would happen if she was ever deported.<\/span> Photograph: Amanda Ulrich\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Growing up, their family had a specific action plan in case of emergency, like other parents in California might prepare for earthquakes or wildfires. But instead, Azda and Guadalupe\u2019s mother prepared them for ICE. If she was deported, their mother told them, they would need to immediately seek help from their aunt, or close friends who lived nearby. Then, to avoid breaking up the family, all of them would need to \u201cflee together\u201d back to Mexico.<\/p>\n Azda and Guadalupe have tried to explain this looming specter of ICE and deportation to their younger siblings, in ways they might be able to understand. When it comes to their little brother, who is four years old, they\u2019ve chosen their words carefully.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to simplify these big concepts to him,\u201d Guadalupe said. \u201cWe just say, like, \u2018Okay, la migra<\/em>, they do bad things. They take families \u2013 se llevan a las mam\u00e1s<\/em> [they take mothers].\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The language of ICE protests has even worked its way into the four-year-old\u2019s budding vocabulary. He\u2019ll sometimes walk around the house, they said, chanting: \u201cLa chota, la migra. \u00bfLa migra, porque dia?<\/em>\u201d [Or: \u201cImmigration, why are you here?\u201d]<\/p>\n This year, as ICE agents have circled San Diego neighborhoods, businesses and school zones, Azda and Guadalupe have felt perpetually on edge. Everywhere they go, whether to school, or the grocery store, or to hang out with friends, they\u2019ve learned to scan for signs of undercover ICE vehicles: Are those overly tinted windows? Does that SUV have a different kind of license plate?<\/em><\/p>\n That sense of unease follows Azda when she goes home, too. As she scrolls through Instagram, reels of dancing and cooking videos bleed into shaky footage of people from around the country being dragged away by ICE. Often, their spouses or children stand off to the side, screaming and crying. But recently, after seeing one of those videos, Azda got angry. She put down her phone and wrote a poem, titled La Migra<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/span>Volunteers with the groups Association of Raza Educators and Uni\u00f3n del Barrio regroup after their October patrol. The suspicious vehicle they spotted, they agreed, did appear to be an undercover ICE agent.<\/span> Photograph: Amanda Ulrich\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cTodo lo que te digan es una mentira.<\/em> <\/strong>\u00bfNo saben que esta es nuestra tierra tambi\u00e9n?\u201d [<\/em>Or: \u201cEverything they tell you is a lie. Don\u2019t they know this is our land too?\u201d]<\/p>\n Azda\u2019s high school, which is uniquely involved in anti-ICE activism and patrolling, has encouraged her burgeoning sense of advocacy. A majority of the school\u2019s students, if not all, are undocumented themselves or come from mixed-status families, according to staff members there. Azda has attended meetings about how to patrol around her school for ICE, and has walked around her own neighborhood with her aunt to look for \u201csuspicious cars or suspicious people\u201d.<\/p>\n She also recognizes that because she\u2019s a US citizen, unlike her sister and mother, she has an added layer of security when it comes to protesting or being outspoken about immigration issues.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I have to do this, I feel like I want to be the one to do it,\u201d Azda said. \u201cBecause if I\u2019m not, then who is?\u201d<\/p>\n Guadalupe attends monthly Association of Raza Educators meetings, but thinks her school in particular \u2013 San Diego City College \u2013 could do more than just hosting a few know-your-rights sessions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something that we have to keep actively engaging with. It can\u2019t just be a one-time workshop,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t just do things by yourself. If something happens to you, you need to have this group of people backing you up.\u201d<\/p>\n As a kid, Guadalupe sometimes felt a gulf between her and her siblings when it came to their differing legal statuses. Now, though, it feels as if they\u2019re all under threat.<\/p>\n \u201cLa migra<\/em> [immigration] and the state are attacking anyone that\u2019s brown. They\u2019re attacking anyone, even US citizens,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I don\u2019t feel that division no more. It\u2019s like they\u2019re coming after all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n The three educators on the early-morning ICE patrol agreed: students across different age groups, from high schoolers to younger elementary school students, have had similar responses to the immigration crackdown. Fear, they said, is an equalizing force.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re all stressed, scared,\u201d Orozco remarked from the driver\u2019s seat, before they spotted the undercover ICE vehicle. \u201cThey don\u2019t know what this means.\u201d<\/p>\n San Diego has seen far more immigration activity in 2025 than in years past; three times as many people were arrested by ICE in just the first half of this year <\/strong>compared to all of 2024, NBC reported. More than 50% of the 2025 arrests involved people with no criminal convictions.<\/p>\n But the immigrant community in San Diego has felt some version of this fear for a long time, Orozco added. Uni\u00f3n del Barrio, the southern California-based <\/strong>political organization that founded <\/strong>the Association of Raza Educators, first started conducting community patrols to scan for law enforcement more than three decades ago. And the recent supreme court ruling merely formalized the racial profiling that\u2019s been happening behind the scenes for years, he said.<\/p>\n When he was 12 years old, in the early 1980s, Orozco remembers waiting at a bus stop in downtown San Diego. An unmarked white van \u2013 with the telltale metal prisoner partition inside \u2013 pulled up unexpectedly in front of him. What he believed to be immigration agents got out and threw Orozco in the back.<\/p>\n <\/span>High school counselor Juan Orozco drives through a neighborhood in south San Diego after spotting what he believed to be an undercover ICE vehicle.<\/span> Photograph: Amanda Ulrich\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I started kicking and screaming, kicking and screaming,\u201d he said. \u201cThen they pulled off to the side and the two officers said: \u2018Say the Pledge of Allegiance.\u2019 I started saying it and they let me go.\u201d<\/p>\n Orozco walked shakily back to the bus. Bystanders were shocked. \u201cIt looked like a kidnapping,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One of the goals of the early-morning teacher patrols is to prevent similar situations from happening \u2013 or to at least alert people when they do.<\/p>\n But after the three educators followed the undercover Dodge down a few streets, they eventually lost track of it. At an intersection, Duran and Orozco looked left to right, and examined the parked cars in driveways for signs of recent movement. But the Dodge was gone.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s the relief that although we did lose [the vehicle], we did at least change their plans,\u201d Duran said. \u201cAnd they might not have had the luck to execute whatever they were expecting to.\u201d<\/p>\n On a policy level, there is some hope on the horizon: in late October, the San Diego city council voted to move forward with an ordinance that, once passed, would require federal law enforcement to obtain a judicial warrant in order to access any non-public area of city-controlled property, <\/strong>which would include the inside of city-run public schools. The ordinance would not apply to the outside of schools, or to surrounding neighborhoods.<\/p>\n Another similar law was passed at the state level in September, although some immigration experts say it may be too soon to tell what kind of impact the new legislation will truly have on ICE operations. The Association of Raza Educators and other groups are also preparing for the eventual fallout from Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated billions to be spent hiring as many as 10,000 new immigration officers across the US.<\/p>\n As the teachers ended their morning patrol and headed back to their original meeting point, the neighborhood began to fill with families. Parents walked hand-in-hand with their children to an elementary school nearby.<\/p>\n <\/span>Parents drop off their children at a local elementary school in San Diego in October. Just a few blocks away, half an hour before school, volunteers spotted what appeared to be an undercover ICE vehicle, driving through a neighborhood.<\/span> Photograph: Amanda Ulrich\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cYou see the beauty of our community,\u201d Duran said, watching the scene unfold from the passenger seat. \u201cJust doing what any other human being would do in the United States: taking their children to school because they have the right to a free education.\u201d<\/p>\n With the patrol over, Duran, Orozco and the other educators and volunteers quickly packed up their gear: their mounted car cameras, their walkie talkies, their megaphones.<\/p>\n It was 7am, and they needed to make their way to their real jobs \u2013 the school day was starting soon.<\/p>\n *Editor\u2019s note: Azda and Guadalupe\u2019s real names have been changed in this story to protect their identities.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018They\u2019re coming after all of us\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The right to an education\u2019<\/h2>\n