CHICAGO — The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has led to a string of concerned reports from principals and parents to Chicago Public Schools officials, according to a review of internal communication from district security personnel.

On Jan. 24, a mistaken CPS report of two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at Hamline Elementary School on the South Side spurred nationwide panic. The two officers were later confirmed to be Secret Service, not ICE — both under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A security video showed the agents approached the school in a relatively benign manner, despite high levels of fear from that day.

A look at emails from district officials in the weeks since the mistaken ICE report demonstrates that both panic and misinformation around ICE in schools under Trump has continued since Hamline. The emails were mostly sent by officials at the CPS’ Student Safety Center, the district’s 24/7 command center for safety communications and were obtained by the Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request.

They show that there were multiple other sightings of ICE vehicles outside schools, some confirmed and some dismissed. And though not always found true, experts say reports of ICE activity can have serious effects at the classroom level.

“Something like this happens in the community and everyone is on edge,” said Patricia Gandara, an education professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The teachers in the classroom are under enormous stress, because they’re trying to teach a class, they’re trying to get the kids ready to take their exams … (But) kids may be crying. They’ve got their heads down. They can’t cooperate.”

According to an ICE spokesperson, the agency makes case-by-case determinations about whether, where and when to conduct an immigration enforcement action at or near a school. ICE focuses on targeting public safety threats, the spokesperson said.

ICE agents are not allowed into schools unless they have a criminal warrant, according to CPS rules. The district said it has provided detailed guidance to principals about how to handle interactions with ICE, and how to protect students who may have a parent or guardian who has been detained by ICE during the school day.

Previously, DHS maintained guidance that restricted immigration enforcement in sensitive locations like schools health care centers and churches. The week after being sworn into office, Trump changed that longstanding precedent, as part of his plans to implement the largest mass deportation operation in United States history.

And though there is a great deal of uncertainty about how swiftly ICE will be able to carry out its ambitious goals for deportations set under Trump, there exists a pervasive fear that ICE will arrest parents around schools. It’s happened a few times, according to the internal emails.

A Jan. 29 message from Jorge Santillan, CPS Student Safety Center coordinator, to several top district officials cited a principal’s report of ICE detaining a person near Eberhart Elementary School in the 14th Ward on the Southwest Side.

The alderman of that ward, Jeylu Gutierrez, saw three ICE trucks in the area detaining that person, Santillan writes in the email.

Gutierrez said in an interview with the Tribune she tries to minimize misinformation of ICE reports in her community that create more chaos and instability for the undocumented community.

“Our constituents are afraid,” she said. “They’re asking neighbors who are citizens or permanent residents to drop off their kids to school.”

Many of the reports are unfounded, the emails show. The day before the alleged arrest in the 14th Ward, the principal of Pulaski International School in Bucktown reported a district bus driver called to say they “would be late (to school) due to ICE detaining the bus,” according to an email from Ben Middleton, a CPS Student Safety Center coordinator to two of the district’s top transportation officials.

Though the driver “alleged ICE had broken windows on her bus while looking for an unspecified student, and she had to return to the depot to get another bus,” the report was later dismissed as untrue, Middleton wrote.

Principals across the city reported possible ICE sightings both at drop-off and dismissal, emails show, but on at least three occasions, the vehicles in question left the premises without incident. In one case, a parent was stopped by ICE on the way to school without being detained.

Still, the effects on students and staff are immeasurable, UCLA’s Gandara said.

Under the first Trump administration, she worked on a study about the effect of the president’s immigration enforcement policy on schools across the country. Researchers used survey data completed by over 3,600 educators, and found that 80% said their students were affected by rumors and concerns. Teachers, Gandara said, overwhelmingly felt powerless.

Those trends popped up in several incidents in CPS schools, gleaned through the emails.

On Jan. 24, the same day as the Hamline Elementary ICE snafu, LaDonna Williams, the principal of Hefferan Elementary School in Garfield Park reached out to the CPS Student Safety Center regarding emails she’d received protesting videos a Heffernan teacher had posted of herself on TikTok.

“You don’t think I already have a plan? And a backup plan?” the teacher said in a video, picked up by the far-right X (formerly Twitter) account Libs Of Chicago. “There’s no way you’re touching one of my students.”

According to the email from a CPS School Safety Center case coordinator, the principal sent the text of the email she received: It describes the videos as “unhinged rants.” Then it provides a warning that “if this dangerous individual is not dealt with appropriately, this will be escalated to (the) appropriate department.”

On Feb. 3, at Hale Elementary on the Southwest Side, a dean notified a CPS School Safety Center case coordinator in an email about a student who brought two Nerf guns “to protect everyone in the school from ICE.” Students were worried because all they’d heard was the word gun, according to the email, and parents were made aware.

On Feb. 26, CPS confirmed to the Tribune that the parent of a student was detained outside of a different elementary school in Gage Park.

ICE later specified it was someone with “criminal convictions for drug trafficking, gang loitering and damage to property who was previously removed from the U.S. to his home country in 2005 and 2013.”

Karina Martinez, communications coordinator for Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said the school was supportive of the family who was affected by the arrest, but that it affected the entire community. Videos of law enforcement in the area spread through social media channels, she said.

“Many of them are plain clothes, and that makes it a little bit of a tricky situation,” she said.

Martinez emphasized vigilance and encouraged reporting suspicious activities to CPS.

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