Good afternoon. I am an Edmonds College student and the coordinator for a program that teaches the Latino community about native plants, habitat restoration, and connecting to the place we now call home. As part of this program, students take two quarters of bilingual ecology classes through Edmonds College.
On Saturday morning, my students were getting ready to celebrate our final day of class. We were going to spend the day planting native plants along the Skykomish River, swimming, and enjoying our last day all together as a group.
At 8:15 am, I pulled the van up to Snoqualmie Hall, where I pick our students up to take them to the rural sites where class is held. As I parked, though, I was faced with flashing lights and four masked men, asking “Do you speak any English at all?”
ICE had followed one of my students into the parking lot and surrounded him, pulling him from his car and placing him in handcuffs. As they opened the door to their undercover vehicle, I saw him — he’s insightful, curious, and the sole provider to his wife and six-year-old daughter — and he looked back at me with a look of sheer terror. I can still see his face when I close my eyes.
Things moved quickly after that. I tried to tell him his rights, but the agent closed the door when he realized what I was doing. They claimed they had a warrant, which I never saw. They refused to give me their names and badge numbers. Once I took out my phone to record, hands shaking and voice quivering, they turned away from the camera and left quickly. It was over before I had even understood what had happened.
The next five hours were also a blur. I sobbed into the phone as I called the professor of the class. At some point, I gave my statement to an Edmonds College security officer. I searched the student’s car, passing over a protective charm and a little girl’s shoe covered in glitter, trying to find anything that would lead me to his wife so I could tell her what had happened to him.
As I was whisked from one new person to another, recounting my story again and again, I was told one thing over and over: “This wasn’t supposed to happen here.”
So why did it? Over the past few days, as I’ve taken time off work to visit the student at the detention center, worked to fundraise for his family, and called lawyer after lawyer, no one had heard a thing from the college until late last night, when faculty and staff were finally sent an email notifying them of the situation. Students, including myself, only received a communication about this event a couple of hours ago. Not only is the rest of the class grieving a beloved community member, but they are also rightfully terrified to return to campus, fearing that they’ll be next.
Until Edmonds College offers support to those affected and appropriately responds to the increased ICE presence on our campus, we will see more students’ eagerness to learn be sacrificed to this regime of fear. The college cannot take days to make the campus aware of an emergency situation, and the gravity and trauma of this situation should not be downplayed. Students need to be aware of the risks they take while attending class. And there are risks, now. This is not an isolated event. Students are not always safe in classrooms; they walk from building to building and cross campus parking lots daily. DHS funding has increased by 70 billion dollars; this will keep happening on our campus and in our community. We need you to train security officers on what to do, send out Triton alerts if ICE is spotted anywhere near campus, create a protocol for response and support, and commit to the safety of your students. Thank you.