A Los Angeles school district is demanding an investigation of an incident last month during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents gathered at a local high school before a raid and were seen publicly urinating on school grounds, not far from where elementary school students were attending summer classes.
According to a statement from El Rancho unified school district, which also released video evidence in the form of surveillance-camera footage, the incident took place on the morning of 17 June at Ruben Salazar high school in Pico Rivera, in south-eastern LA county.
After school staff observed eight to 10 marked and unmarked Ice vehicles arrive on the high school campus, which is adjacent to an elementary school, a park and a preschool playground, they asked the federal agents to leave.
The school has since written to Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, to request an inquiry. “At no time was a legal or legitimate reason offered or provided as to why Ice agents entered and remained on school grounds, nor did they provide any judicial warrant,” the school district said in the statement.
Later the same day, federal immigration agents were caught on video roughly arresting a 20-year-old US citizen, Adrian Martinez, during an immigration raid at a nearby Pico Rivera shopping center. Martinez had verbally objected to the arrest of a co-worker but now faces a felony charge of interfering with or impeding a federal agent.
After the Ice agents agreed to leave the high school campus, school district staff told managers that they had seen the federal agents “urinating at Salazar in public view”. A review of surveillance camera video, posted on YouTube by the school district, appears to show 10 federal agents urinating near storage containers in the high school parking lot, from 8.54am to 9.04am.
Not only did Ice agents “unlawfully trespass” on school grounds, the district complained, “but they also did not exercise sound and respectful judgment with the risk of exposing themselves to minors and committing a public offense under California law”.
According to the law firm Eisner Gorin, whose partners have previously worked in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, when an act of public urination “occurs near a school or park where children are present, it might be classified as lewd conduct” under state law.
Anyone convicted of this offense, the firm notes on its website, faces up to six months in county jail, a fine of up to $1,000 and being required to register as a sex offender.
“It’s not enough that they’ve spent weeks violently ambushing people, now Ice and CBP agents are allegedly entering school campuses, pulling down their pants and urinating on playgrounds,” Los Angeles county supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. “It’s a slap in the face to our communities – especially to our children. I join the El Rancho unified school district in demanding a full federal investigation into this incident.”
A homeland security spokesperson told the Guardian, “This matter is being investigated.”
