Copyright Chicago Tribune
New Trier High School students who regularly volunteer with refugees and migrants in Chicago say that the school is curtailing their volunteerism due to the high level of federal immigration enforcement in the city by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Students with the school’s Social Service Board say that their group has seen some of its volunteer work suspended by the school, in Winnetka with a Northfield campus for freshmen, for the past two weeks. Sophomore Zoe Dillon said Social Service Board’s staff sponsors cited a rise in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity when students were told they would not be able to volunteer at several locations earlier this month. “The gist of what they told us is with the increase in ICE activity, the school is limiting people going to Chicago,” she said. New Trier students in social service groups regularly volunteer with nonprofit organizations throughout the Chicago area as an afterschool activity, with school staff bussing students to and from volunteer sites. According to Niki Dizon, New Trier’s chief communications officer, the school is giving “additional review to requests for travel in the Chicagoland area” amid reports of federal immigration enforcement as well as protest actions. “We appreciate the patience of our students, faculty and staff as we work to allow voluntary learning and service opportunities while prioritizing the safety of students and staff while they are off-site,” the statement reads. In recent weeks, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol and ICE agents have detained numerous immigrants and U.S. citizens in what the federal government calls “Operation Midway Blitz.” Immigration officers have wrestled adults and children to the ground and beat some of them, shot at protestors and journalists with pepper balls and deployed tear gas in city and suburban neighborhoods. Residents have responded by organizing street patrols, blowing whistles to alert neighbors about immigration enforcement actions and organizing regular protests outside of ICE’s Broadview detention center. Some municipalities have sought to bar federal immigration actions on public property. Amid the immigration crackdown, New Trier administrators notified staff of the new restrictions on field trips Oct. 13. According to Dillon and fellow student volunteer and sophomore Claire Chapman, members of the Social Service Board are currently unable to volunteer at four locations, all on Chicago’s North Side. Two other locations, Inspired Youth Tutoring in Edgewater and Onward Neighborhood House in Belmont Cragin, were also restricted for travel but have since been approved. “I don’t think they’re doing it out of malintent,” Dillon said. “They want to keep students safe.” On the other hand, Chapman said, the indefinite freeze on some volunteer activities has “frustrated” her and her fellow students. “It makes us feel powerless, and it makes the school look a little bit bad, because we back out at the sign of danger,” she said. “These kids and these families who are actually affected by ICE, we can’t support them when they need it the most.” Some New Trier student activities have continued unabated: the school’s athletics calendar, posted on New Trier’s website, has not noted any event changes or cancellations since Oct. 12. Dizon said administrators have asked faculty and staff to reconsider off-site visits or move them closer to campus. As an example, she cited a photography class trip that was moved from the city to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. Several of the volunteer organizations that student volunteers have been barred from visiting are located in neighborhoods where immigration raids have taken place in recent weeks, and most directly serve the city’s immigrant and refugee populations. That includes Forging Opportunities for Refugees in America, where Dillon and three other students began volunteering earlier this fall. FORA, located in West Ridge, a north side neighborhood west of Rogers Park, offers tutoring services to refugee students attending Chicago Public Schools. Giulianna Larson, FORA’s chief public relations officer, says the organization focuses on students who have experienced substantial learning disruptions as a result of their refugee status, such as students from Afghanistan or members of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority group. Volunteers provide one-on-one tutoring in foundational literacy as well as phonics and English grammar and vocabulary. Larson says New Trier students are a small but important part of the hundreds of volunteers that work with FORA because they’re consistent, which helps form stronger ties between tutors and their students. “I can confidently say that when a student really develops a strong relationship with a tutor, that is one of the motivating factors that keeps them coming back each day,” Larson said. Dillon noted that the pause meant that for weeks she had not seen or interacted with the student she tutored, an “outgoing and bright” nine-year-old Afghani girl. “I built a relationship with the kid I was tutoring and now I can’t see her any more,” Dillon said. Dizon said faculty sponsors and student activity leaders are having discussions with service partners to determine when it will be safe to return. Chapman, who is one of the student co-heads of the Onward Neighborhood House group, said she believes that group got the go-ahead to return to their volunteer site because it has multiple layers of security. FORA volunteers are still waiting for approval to go back. Larson said Wednesday the refugee organization last heard from New Trier on Oct. 14, when a student volunteer first notified them of the travel restriction. For her part, Larson says that FORA has not been targeted by immigration authorities as of Oct. 29, and is continuing to offer in-person tutoring, even as some Chicago Board of Education members are calling on the city’s public schools to offer remote learning amid the ICE surge. Dillon, who addressed New Trier’s Board of Education members earlier this month, met with Superintendent Peter Tragos on Friday to discuss student safety and whether the school will lift its travel restrictions on more student groups. She remains hopeful her group will be allowed to continue its volunteer work soon.
