Los Angeles teachers stood outside district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles this month and asked something unusual of their neighbors: help get kids to and from school safely, because federal immigration agents are still making arrests in the community. With the new school year set to begin Wednesday, August 12, the request comes wrapped in a very specific ask — walk the routes, watch the corners, and be ready to pull out a phone.
Teachers and a Grassroots Group Join Forces
The news conference, organized by United Teachers Los Angeles members alongside the grassroots organization Unión del Barrio, framed the effort as a direct response to what educators describe as a school year overshadowed by fear. As reported by LAist, Ron Gochez, a history teacher at Dr. Maya Angelou Community Senior High, said students have suffered tremendously amid the ongoing enforcement climate. Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, a UTLA member and English language development coordinator at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, said educators owe students a school where they feel safe to learn, dream and thrive.
Unión del Barrio, founded in San Diego as a grassroots organization, has volunteers who patrol neighborhoods and warn community members about federal immigration agents, per the outlet's reporting. Ingrid Villeda, a teacher at 93rd Street Elementary in South Los Angeles, said keeping students and parents safe requires being on the streets before and after school. She urged Angelenos to document arrests with their phones, telling the outlet that everyone needs to be ready to record.
Why the Sidewalks, Not Just the Schoolyard
The push to patrol streets rather than campuses reflects a legal and administrative gap that has widened since federal officials rescinded the Department of Homeland Security's 2011 “Sensitive Locations Policy” on January 21, 2025, according to the Los Angeles County Office of Education. That policy had previously instructed ICE officers to avoid civil immigration enforcement at or near K-12 schools, bus stops, hospitals, and places of worship. Its removal stripped away decades of administrative protection around the very sidewalks students use to reach class.
LAUSD updated its own reference guide, REF-6767.5, on February 23, 2026, requiring school site administrators to immediately notify district operations leadership and the Los Angeles School Police Department if federal immigration officials request access to campuses, students, or records. But that guidance covers the schoolhouse gate, not the walk to it — a distinction educators say has become the central vulnerability. The fear is not abstract: on August 11, 2025, federal immigration agents drew weapons and handcuffed a 15-year-old student with disabilities outside Arleta High School in a case of mistaken identity, according to The Guardian, prompting a $1 million damage claim filed against federal agencies by the student's family.
Trainings Planned Before the First Bell
Los Angeles educators announced two upcoming trainings tied to the safe-passage push, the outlet reported. A general public training is scheduled as an in-person session at 11 a.m. Saturday, August 8, at the United Teachers Los Angeles building, 3303 Wilshire Blvd., 10th floor. A separate all-school-employee training — for teachers, administrators, bus drivers, campus aides, custodians and office staff — is set as an online session at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, August 14, and requires online registration.
The trainings arrive as the Trump administration continues a mass deportation campaign, per LAist's reporting, and as students' family members and neighbors have been detained and deported. The outlet also noted that the Supreme Court stayed a lower court order barring federal agents from targeting people based on perceived race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish, or speaking English with an accent.
Legal Backstops for Students, But Limits Remain
Underpinning the community response is a body of law meant to keep classrooms open to every child regardless of immigration status. Under the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Plyler v. Doe, public school systems are constitutionally forbidden under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause from denying children access to free K-12 education based on immigration status, according to the National Immigration Law Center. California's Assembly Bill 699, enacted under Education Code § 234.7, separately bars public schools from collecting immigration-status information on students or their families and requires local agencies to maintain policies preventing immigration enforcement on campus, per the California Department of Justice.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 495 into law in October 2025, allowing parents to execute Caregiver's Authorization Affidavits with relatives up to the fifth degree of kinship so children can keep attending school uninterrupted if a parent is detained or deported, according to the law firm Lozano Smith. Yet as the county education office's toolkit notes, district authority effectively ends at the school gates — leaving the walk to and from campus as the gap that Unión del Barrio volunteers and UTLA's School-Based Sanctuary Teams are trying to fill this year.
UTLA established those Sanctuary Teams across district campuses for the current school year, organizing educators, staff and parents to build localized safety plans, monitor perimeter safe-passage routes, and connect with rapid response networks, according to the union. The effort lands against the backdrop of a district of enormous scale: LAUSD is the nation's second-largest school district, serving more than 520,000 students across 710 square miles of Los Angeles County, with Latino students making up more than 70 percent of enrollment, per LAUSD's own figures.
District and City Moves in the Same Direction
LAUSD's Board of Education has also taken steps at the policy level. On March 10, 2026, the board passed a resolution directing the superintendent to build a review framework ensuring district funds are not paid to vendors or contractors that engage in or enable ICE detention, surveillance, or civil immigration enforcement, according to the district. The Los Angeles City Council took a parallel step in March 2026, unanimously voting to bar all municipal employees, including sworn officers, from accepting paid secondary employment with federal civil immigration enforcement agencies or their contractors, as reported by the Los Angeles Daily News.
The safe-passage campaign follows a string of incidents that have kept immigration enforcement near the top of LA's education beat. Hoodline previously reported on a rally outside LAUSD headquarters after federal officers tackled and detained a deaf high school senior, and later covered an ICE detention of a graduate just hours after his commencement ceremony. As Los Angeles Unified prepares to open its doors Wednesday, teachers say the message to families is straightforward: the classroom may be protected, but getting there safely is now a community effort.
