Waltham Public Schools superintendent urges ICE to avoid arrests during student commutes

Waltham Public Schools Superintendent Marisa Mendonsa took a stand against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Waltham in an open letter sent to the agency on Tuesday.

In the letter Mendonsa urged ICE agents to not conduct raids or arrests at times when students are traveling to and from school. Students should not have to witness that kind of violence, she wrote.

Mendonsa also shared the letter with faculty, staff and parents via email. 

“I appeal to the Department of Homeland Security to change your tactics,” Mendonsa wrote in the letter. “I cannot control your actions, but I can ask that you do not do this during a time when my students are simply trying to go to school and to become better humans.”

Mendonsa wrote the letter and then showed it to Waltham Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy, who as mayor serves as chair of the School Committee. McCarthy in an email to The Waltham Times said she concurred with the letter’s content.

Mendonsa said on Thursday that she has received only an email auto-reply from ICE. She said she doesn’t know that anyone from the agency will send an actual response and added that it’s her first time contacting a federal agency in this capacity.

“I’m always hopeful that somebody has read it and somebody is taking it into consideration,” said Mendonsa. “But more importantly for me, I’m hoping that somebody is able to see this and just pause for a moment to be reflective and to consider our students and children as they’re making their way to and from school.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, emailed a statement to The Waltham Times on Thursday in response to a request for comment on Mendonsa’s letter.

McLaughlin said in the statement that ICE is protecting schools from violent criminals.

“Our officers use discretion,” she said, adding that they would need approval from a secondary supervisor before agents could take any actions in a school.

It was unclear whether federal officials had read Mendonsa’s letter.

The Waltham Times also reached out to every member of the Waltham Public School Committee in addition to McCarthy and had not heard back from any of them by deadline Thursday afternoon.

Mendonsa’s letter came a few weeks after ICE agents broke a car window to take a person by force on Moody Street. Mendonsa said in the letter that the event was witnessed by Waltham Public School students on their way to school.

“I never imagined in my 28-year career that any of my students would encounter these horrors on American soil,” she wrote.

Mendonsa said in Thursday’s interview that the letter felt like the best action she could take to help her students at this time.

“​​There’s not much that I can do in terms of what’s occurring when these raids or arrests are happening,” she said. “But I felt I needed to try to do something that could shelter our students from that experience.”

Mendonsa said in the letter that school attendance has been down since ICE raids began in Massachusetts early this year. She added that many families and students are afraid to leave their homes to go to school when there are rumours of ICE agents in the area.

Mendonsa wrote that WPS staff and the greater Waltham community see themselves as role models for the students and asked that ICE agents coming into Waltham do the same.

To that end, she asked ICE agents to conduct their raids outside the hours when students are going to and from school or waiting for the bus, specifically from 6:30 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. She also requested that her office be notified if a student would be left unattended due to the arrest of a family member.

“While we may be a country at odds,” Mendonsa wrote in the letter, “we are not a country at war. Therefore, we should not be acting as one while our children are watching.”