Four boys kicked a soccer ball in a small garden outside Roberts Academy on a Thursday afternoon last month. The elementary school sits in Cincinnati's Price Hill, a vibrant Latino neighborhood where Guatemalan flags flutter above taco trucks and small businesses. Nearly three-quarters of Roberts Academy's students are Latino.
On April 15, two police officers arrived at Roberts Academy and two other nearby schools. Tonina Lamanna, a 17-year veteran from Gratis, Ohio, and a colleague from a department 50 miles away, displayed a list of approximately 30 names to school staff. They said they were conducting wellness checks. They never mentioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement or produced warrants.
At Western Hills University High School, officers confirmed that two students on their list were enrolled. School administrators turned them away. At all three locations, staff refused to grant access to children after the officers could not produce legal paperwork. Both officers wore visible sidearms during the visits.
"ICE does not target schools for enforcement actions," an agency spokesperson said later. "A local law enforcement partner attempted to verify school enrollment and conduct welfare checks on children who arrived unaccompanied across the border."
Cincinnati's Mayor Aftab Pureval called the incidents "disgusting on so many levels." Rights groups said the operations reveal how aggressively federal authorities under the Trump administration are pursuing vulnerable immigrant communities. Police officers working on behalf of ICE can only conduct such checks under limited circumstances and within their own jurisdictions, yet the Gratis officers traveled outside their territory without authorization or disclosure of their purpose.
Lamanna was placed on leave after the incident. So was her colleague, Jeff Baylor. But in Gratis, a village of about 800 people with a population that is 100% white according to the U.S. Census Bureau, residents protested the officers' suspension at a public meeting held a week later. Baylor initially resigned but rescinded his resignation after community pushback.
The timing of the school visits struck a nerve in Cincinnati. Last May, ICE agents arrested four immigrants in a Kroger parking lot in Price Hill. One was a father with his young family. Around the same time, 19-year-old Emerson Colindres, a star soccer player with no criminal record, was deported to Honduras. He had attended school on the same grounds as one of the schools targeted by police last month.
"For about a week after that, we had basically no customers," said the owner of El Mini Valle Mexican Store, who came from Guatemala in 2000. "People were too scared to come out."
The school visits triggered fresh anxiety in a community already wary of immigration enforcement. "The possibility of an immigration arrest, either inside or just outside your school, simply adds another layer of stress and anxiety," said Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. "How can you learn if you are worried about being arrested, or your parent being arrested when they come to pick you up?"
Immigrant and Latino-owned businesses have felt the impact. Workers and customers have disappeared because of deportations or fear of arrest. "Just because a worker is arrested doesn't mean they were working illegally," Tramonte said.
Concerns have surfaced nationally that police departments are sharing license plate reader data with ICE to target undocumented immigrants. According to crowdsourced surveillance mapping data, a Flock camera sits less than half a mile from Western Hills University High School. By contrast, Gratis has no Flock cameras within a 10-mile radius.
The Trump administration says it launched an initiative last November involving ICE and local law enforcement to check on unaccompanied children who entered the country illegally. DHS claims more than 145,000 such children were placed with unvetted sponsors. The administration says sponsors were not properly vetted during the Biden years.
Questions about how the Gratis officers obtained authorization to operate in Cincinnati remain unanswered. Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Gratis, declined to comment on whether he had prior knowledge of his officers leaving their jurisdiction for ICE operations. A village administrator said an investigation would be discussed during the week of May 11.
Lamanna's record raises additional questions. She was fired from another police department in 2017 for allegedly being untruthful and filing false documents before joining Gratis.
When asked if ICE planned to take measures to prevent future incidents, an agency spokesperson declined to respond. They also declined to provide specific examples of undocumented sponsors charged with endangering unaccompanied minors who entered during the Biden administration.
Author James Rodriguez: "Sending officers from an all-white village 50 miles away to conduct warrantless checks at schools serving mostly Latino students without disclosing they worked for ICE is exactly the kind of overreach that terrifies entire communities into silence."
Comments