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A substitute teacher at a Long Island high school allegedly threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement while overseeing an after-school suspension class “with a lot of Hispanic kids.”
A gaggle of students attending their mandated in-school suspension class at Roosevelt High School was continuing a longstanding joke of signing in under fake names when the sub overseeing them snapped, a witness told NBC 12.
He allegedly stormed out of the classroom and went to grab the assistant principal. When he returned moments later, he claimed he had permission to call ICE on them because their prank was “kind of like a crime.”
“I was like, ‘That’s not OK. Like, why would you say that?’ Especially in a classroom with a lot of Hispanic kids. That’s not something you should say. And then he’s like, ‘Oh no, that’s not how I meant it. But it is true, though’,” Daniel Battle, who was serving suspension that day, told the outlet.
The student said that he marched out of the classroom and right to the principal’s office to report the teacher’s flagrant threat.
“I did the right thing to stand up for, not just myself and my peers,” Battle told the outlet.
His mother, Raquel Medrano, didn’t hesitate to stand by her son, who she said has been stopped by ICE before.
“It’s just making the fear that they already have inside of them grow. Instead of helping make them feel safe and giving them a safe haven, it’s like, ‘Should I go to school today? What if I don’t come home?’,” Medrano said.
“My parents are citizens. I was born here. But we look like whatever they’re looking for, I guess,” she added.
Dr. Shawn Wightman, the superintendent of the Roosevelt Union Free School District, confirmed in a letter to families Thursday evening that the “substitute staff member has been removed from the after-school assignment pending the outcome of the review.”
The school added that its officials “recognize that references to immigration enforcement can be deeply distressing for some students and families” and said it would be offering counseling to anyone impacted.
The school district is investigating the allegations.
Multiple Roosevelt High School students have been taken into ICE custody before the sub’s threat.
In June, 18-year-old Alvaro Velasquez was detained weeks before he was set to graduate.
Velasquez, a Guatemalan national, came to the US when he was 16 after his mother died. Wightman described him as a “student that every teacher would dream to have.”
He had no criminal record, but agreed to self-deport in September, ABC 7 reported.
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