Border Patrol Agents May Board School Buses to Check Citizenship, Texas School District Warns Parents

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests continue to take place around the country, a school district in Texas has warned parents about the possibility of U.S. Border Patrol agents checking the immigration status of students on school buses traveling for extracurricular activities.

In a letter sent out on Feb. 5, the Alice Independent School District said they received information that Border Patrol agents may be boarding school buses at highway checkpoints in and out of the Rio Grande Valley "to question students about their citizenship status," Superintendent Anysia Trevino wrote in the letter.

Trevino mentioned that if a student does not have identification or other documents that show their legal status, "they may be removed from the bus, detained, and possibly deported."

It is a concerning issue for the school district, as the Texas Education Agency says 92% of its 4,500 total students across six schools are Hispanic.

On top of that, the letter warns that if students lie about their immigration status, they may not get U.S. citizenship in the future. As the Texas Tribune reports, under current federal immigration law, someone who lies about being a U.S. citizen may be disqualified from receiving a permanent resident card or citizenship.

For the past two-and-a-half weeks, detentions have seemingly picked up as a CBS News report detailed that ICE has had to release migrants due to overcrowding:

"On Tuesday morning, space inside ICE detention facilities was at 109% capacity, with the agency holding close to 42,000 migrant detainees, despite having, on paper, a 38,521-bed capacity in its network of for-profit prisons and county jails," according to the internal Department of Homeland Security data.

The tactic allegedly used by Border Patrol agents is possible thanks to the Trump administration scrapping a longstanding practice that immigration agents do not enter public schools, health care facilities and places of worship to arrest undocumented immigrants.

More than two weeks since President Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term, his mass deportation plan conducted by ICE officials has led to the detention of nearly 9,000 undocumented immigrants, out of which 5,693 of them have been deported.

In response to the possible school bus patrols, the district is considering having a chaperone travel in a separate vehicle if a student is detained, as they would be able to stay with the student while the rest of the group continues their journey.