Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeted an Oakland man who was dropping off an elementary school student, leading to a car crash.
West Oakland Elementary School Councilmember Carroll Fife said that at around 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, she received texts from several teachers. There were reports of masked ICE agents riding in an SUV trying to apprehend an individual whom they identified as the father or grandfather of a child he was dropping off at Hoover Elementary School.
ICE Operation Results in Car Crash
The Oakland Police Department (OPD) said in a press release that an "outside law enforcement agency" was carrying out an operation within city limits. It added that, during that operation, they had attempted to "contact the vehicle involved in their case."
The statement added that the driver later crashed into an uninvolved car on the 800 block of 31st Street. The OPD said that it was not notified of any outside agency conducting investigative operations in that particular area of Oakland, according to the Oakland Side.
The communications manager for the Oakland Unified School District, Ericka Doolittle, said that the district could not speak to the specifics of the ICE operation. However, she confirmed that "students were not involved and no ICE activity took place on a school campus."
The principal of Hoover Elementary, Lissette Averhoff, said that she was not able to confirm whether or not the target of the ICE operation was the guardian of a student at the school. She said that it was unclear why they were near the school.
Scaring the Local Community
At the time of the incident, a notification was sent to parents, saying that there was ICE activity in the neighborhood. It added that children were safe and secure at school while warning parents not to come to school. It said it would alert families when things have quieted down, KTVU reported.
In an email sent later on, OUSD said that Hoover Elementary was placed on lockdown due to the proximity of the campus to the ICE activity. It read that other schools were following standard protocol for potential ICE activity in the community.
The head of Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, Monique Berlanga, said that the car crash scared people in the neighborhood. The incident also sparked a protest of roughly 50 people, which included Oakland teachers and teachers' union staff who gathered outside Hoover in the late morning, as per KQED.
Originally published on parentherald.com
