A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson tells WVXU that a local law enforcement partner visited three Cincinnati Public School buildings Wednesday in an attempt to verify enrollment and conduct welfare checks on children who arrived unaccompanied across the border.
The agency says the attempt was part of a new state and local law enforcement partnership known as the "Unaccompanied Alien Children Safety Verification Initiative." ICE says the initiative represents the agency's commitment to protect vulnerable children from sexual abuse and exploitation, adding its primary focus is to ensure immigrant children are safe and not being exploited.
"ICE Homeland Security Investigations is dedicated to locating the 450,000 unaccompanied children that came in through the border under the Biden administration. Sadly, during those four years, many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied were placed with unvetted sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers. The Trump administration has located more than 145,000 of these children," a portion of the agency's statement reads.
According to Cincinnati Public Schools, two Village of Gratis police officers, including Police Chief Tonina Lamanna, tried to enter Western Hills High School and two elementary schools, Rees E. Price Academy and Roberts Academy, to conduct apparent wellness checks, but didn't elaborate further.
All three schools have a high percentage of Hispanic students and students learning English.
CPS says the officers were wearing police department uniforms, not ICE uniforms, and didn't show any warrants or elaborate about the purpose of the wellness checks. CPS Superintendent Shauna Murphy says staff at all three school buildings did the right thing by turning the officers away.
Officers 'were hoping to intimidate,' advocate says
Despite ICE's explanation, some in the community are questioning the true motivation behind the so-called wellness check.
Nancy Sullivan, a Price Hill resident and director of Transformations CDC, an organization that advocates for immigrants, says she believes the two officers were on a mission to obtain students' information to facilitate immigration enforcement operations, not to check on students' health and well-being.
"It was really an effort to get the addresses to hand over to ICE so that those young people could be apprehended," Sullivan told WVXU.
She says it was likely that the officers were trying to intimidate school staff into handing over private student information.
ICE insists the goal was to locate unaccompanied children, but not detain them at school.
"To be crystal clear, this was not an ICE officer or an enforcement action," an ICE spokesperson wrote.
In a message shared with district families Thursday night, Cincinnati Public Schools says it's focused on protecting students and preserving schools as safe spaces for learning, regardless of a child's background.
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