OPINION: Which side are you on when ICE comes to arrest your students?

The scenario plays out in the mind of every teacher and school administrator. If there’s a shooter outside, or inside, or in the area, what do I do?

Some years ago, when I was teaching at a high school in Gallup, a threat from inside our school led to a lockdown lasting three hours. The students and I decided to carry on with the lesson, an analysis of an essay whose title I’ve forgotten. When a cop entered to check backpacks for the third time, we politely detained him, quizzing him on the correct spelling of the day’s vocab words. We didn’t go easy on him, but that cop was a pretty good speller, and we failed to stump him. Police and dogs swept the school, and the situation was safely defused. I will always remember that officer’s decency, and his humanity.

I can’t tell you what a relief it was to have that cop in the classroom. I’ve experienced three (or four?) lockdowns since then. When the email comes, or you hear the public address announcement, time stops. Your heart races and your stomach sinks and your throat tightens as the adrenaline starts to cycle up. It’s hard to express the relief one feels in these situations when a uniformed officer appears in the hallway. There’s no question why they’ve come: They’ve come, at the risk of their own safety, to keep people safe.

Now, things are not so clear-cut. I find myself enacting different scenarios in my mind now, in which law enforcement arrives, not to protect students, but to apprehend and deport them. These days, the question is not how to keep students safe until officers arrive, but keep them safe when officers arrive.

Here are the facts: Billions of taxpayer dollars are being plowed into Immigrant and Customs Enforcement in order to meet deportation targets. Trump’s campaign promise of prioritizing violent criminals is proven every day to be a lie, as we see ICE raiding restaurant kitchens, farm fields and factories.

And schools. Students are now expressing their fears of seeing grandparents taken away, or of being ripped away from their friends and sent to a country they don’t know very well.

Now, teachers are asking themselves, what do I do if ICE arrives? Am I going to obey the habits of a lifetime and follow the commands of uniformed officers? Or am I going to stand up and get in their way?

What is the purpose of education if not to cultivate the values of a democratic society, a society that defends the vulnerable, creates opportunity for everyone, protects the dignity of all of its members and, not least of all, stands up against bullies? If these are your values as educators, you may soon get a chance to demonstrate them. If they are not, I respectfully invite you to reconsider your present line of work.

To every life there comes a moment when we are faced with a tough choice. I have lived long enough, like most people of a certain age, to have faced a few such moments. On some occasions I chose badly, out of indecisiveness or cowardice, and those moments will haunt me to the grave. Other times I managed, somehow, despite my fear, to do the right thing.

One thing is sure: There will be no second chances, and no time to reflect. The moment will come fast, and pass quickly, but you’ll have a lifetime to think about what you did.