Montgomery County PTA Hosts Anti-ICE Training, Urges Parents to Create ‘Safe Passage’ for Illegal Immigrants

Parent Teacher Association officials in Maryland’s largest school district recently hosted a training to instruct families on how to identify and respond to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity.

The virtual PTA session titled “ICE Response & Organizing Tools for PTAs, Parents & Guardians” was held on January 20 and headlined by Councilwoman Kristin Mink, who told community members how to identify ICE, how to create “safe passages” so families can “get to and from school safely,” and more.

One slide in Mink’s presentation, which was obtained by Defending Education and shared with National Review, included a “necessary reflection on power.”

“Especially for white allies, whistles can represent a subconscious desire for authority, protection, or control in moments of crisis,” the slide said. “But rapid response is not about assuming authority. . . . When we question decisions made by those impacted, we risk centering our own comfort instead of impacted people.”

The online presentation was promoted by and advertised on the Montgomery County Council of PTAs’ social media. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals (MCAAP), Montgomery County Education Association, Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective, and the Fans of Asylum and Immigration Reform supported the information session as well, according to an online sign-up sheet.

“Parents in Montgomery County Maryland were invited to a PTA meeting, which reportedly became a closed-door ‘ICE response’ organizing training, including how to identify ICE, what to do if agents are seen and how PTA and school communities can get involved to support ‘families impacted,'” Kendall Tietz, investigative reporter at Defending Education said. “It goes without saying, PTAs should focus on their original intent: students — not injecting inflammatory and divisive political rhetoric into the community.”

MCCPTA oversees individual parent-teacher associations in Montgomery County. Many local PTAs advertised the session on their official platforms as well, including Gaithersburg Middle School’s PTA, Laytonsville Elementary’s PTA, Stedwick Elementary’s PTA, and more.

Mink’s anti-ICE training comes after ICE officers pulled over a car and arrested two men outside a local middle school in September “as horrified children, caregivers and school staff watched,” Mink said. “We cannot, must not, and will not normalize an event like this, which leaves marks on the souls of not only those having loved ones violently ripped from them, but on those who witness it,” she added.

No ICE agents were present on school grounds. National Review found no reported or documented ICE raids on Montgomery County Public Schools property in the past year. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has additionally clarified that ICE does not and would not raid schools unless an illegal immigrant felon ever fled into a school, or ICE identified a child sex offender within a school. Either of those examples “may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said in September. “But this has not happened.”

Mink has nonetheless held several informational sessions on how school staff members can equip themselves with the “tools to slow ICE down and protect each other.” The training instructed parents on how to establish a “safe passage” through which volunteers escort children with illegal immigrant parents to school, or sign up to monitor areas around schools to watch for ICE agents during school drop-off and pickup.

At a recent meeting, Mink, who sits on the Montgomery County Council Education and Culture Committee, stressed the importance of offering resources to immigrant families as ICE cracks down on illegal immigration.

"The level of trauma that our student body is facing from this crisis is hard to even wrap my mind around," Mink said. "It's a constant barrage. We are trying to get our kids to be successful academically through all of this. It's an absolutely unfathomable timeline that we are living through right now."

In late January, Mink introduced a bill that would prohibit immigration enforcement activities in parking lots, garages, and vacant lots in the county, as well as “mandate all County facilities to require a judicial warrant to allow ICE entry to any areas not open to the general public.”

“The County Values Act is about ensuring we are making it as difficult as possible for ICE to access and operate on County property,” she said. “We cannot make ICE agents operate lawfully, but what we can do is employ the strongest possible protocols at every facility the County owns or operates, fully train our staff to respond to emergencies, and even block off vacant parking lots ICE tries to use.”

Mink and MCCPTA did not respond to requests for comment.

Progressive school districts across the country offer ICE trainings to community and family members interested in how to identify, and possibly obstruct or hinder, immigration enforcement activities. In December, Oregon’s largest teachers’ union hosted multiple “anti-ICE” trainings to instruct school staffers on how to respond to ICE activity.

Most notably, Renee Good, the woman who was fatally shot by ICE in Minneapolis recently, was connected to an anti-ICE “ICEWatch” group in Minnesota through her son’s social-justice-focused charter school. Good was killed after she accelerated her vehicle in the direction of an ICE agent.