Students and staff will ask for more specific and comprehensive training on how to deal with potential U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement visits to Tucson Unified School District school campuses at tonight’s Governing Board meeting.
A petition has been signed by more than 1,000 staffers at about 40 of the district’s 88 schools, asking for clearer guidelines including a plan similar to a lockdown or fire drill, funding for training, a script for front-office workers and grade-level training for students.
This follows last month’s mandatory staff ICE training, prompted by staffers.
“More needs to be done. There are holes that need to be filled. And this is what the petition is beginning to address,” said Eliseo Gomez, a forensics teacher at Pueblo High School.
“About half the school sites in the district have a petition circulating and this petition is being signed by all sorts of TUSD employees: Certified teachers as well as classified status, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, monitors, substitute teachers,” Gomez said.
The petitions are vital, some students say and a family/caregiver version is on the horizon.
“This petition is important to me because it reflects real fears in our community and students want our district to take those concerns seriously and make sure everyone feels safe and supported at school,” said Catalina High School senior Emiliano Caldera.
As of Tuesday afternoon, TUSD does not have any more ICE-related staff training planned, spokesperson Karla Escamilla said.
After an appeal from staffers last month, TUSD provided mandatory training for potential ICE campus visits. How to protect students’ identities, identifying judicial warrants and ways to approach officers arriving on campus were included in the training, which is derived from TUSD immigration enforcement guidelines.
Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said then, that if ICE violates traditional visitor protocol, schools will go into lockdown.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the district says ICE has not been on a campus this school year. Yet, the training and preparation is imperative in a district where about 65% of its 35,000 students identify as Hispanic.
“It’s a new kind of threat that we’re not treating like a threat,” Gomez said. “The training is for students so they know what’s happening and training for all staff so they know how to talk to students about this.”
The petition asks TUSD for four items:
1. A clear and concise plan to address ICE presence: Requests here include a deadline of March 23 for a plan based on attendance rates for what would trigger remote or hybrid learning for students; a before-and after-school plan possibly involving staff to do “ICE watch.”
2. Clarity and accountability regarding district policies relevant to ICE: This includes providing all staff with laminated cards with important contact numbers, a script for what to say to agents, know your rights information and more. Many of these items are already in place, the petition says, and it asks for consistent messaging throughout campuses and for it to become board policy. “Upon codification, they must be distributed to site administrators for immediate dissemination to staff,” the document says.
3. To implement trainings for students and staff in addressing ICE and ICE-related issues: This asks for mandatory training given to all staff at all sites by the end of spring 2026 semester and repeated each semester. Student training requests include age-appropriate versions by grade level and Know Your Rights training during school hours for students and staff in conjunction with local grassroots organizations.
4. Funding to accomplish the above items by the beginning of next school year. This includes partnering with legal organizations to provide legal advice, school buses for students who are at higher risk of an ICE operation and flexible after school or off-campus tutoring as needed.
Gomez says he hopes tonight there’s discussion and recognition.
“I hope there’s acknowledgement of the same fire that a lot of educators feel from being with our students day-in and day-out,” he said. “We also saw students first take action when they joined the Jan. 20 walkout. And then we saw that mirrored when we shut down 20-plus schools on Jan. 30. This is a direct material follow-up of those two marches. People are feeling like there needs to be action on this.
“And the people who are in the position to make those decisions and hold that power need to be told exactly how we’re feeling and what needs to be done.”
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