A Texas superintendent on Wednesday warned that border patrol agents could be boarding school buses to check immigration paperwork but later rescinded the announcement. The top U.S. border agent refuted the claim on Thursday.
Alice Independent School District Superintendent Anysia Trevino on Wednesday posted a letter to Facebook notifying parents that border patrol agents “may be boarding school buses at highway checkpoints in and out of the [Rio Grande] Valley to questions about their citizenship status.”
The letter also said that the district was considering sending a chaperone vehicle to accompany extracurricular activity buses. “In the event that a student is detained,” it explains, “a school administrator in the chaperone vehicle would be able to stay with the student while the rest of the group continues their journey.”
Local news outlets reported that the district later took down the post from Facebook, according to the Dallas Morning News.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks called those allegations “absurd” in an interview with Fox and Friends on Thursday morning, and said that border agents would not “target school buses and children.”
“We’re targeting criminals and those who have broken the law by entering the country illegally,” Banks said, as quoted by the Morning News.
Before Banks was the Border Patrol chief, he served as Gov. Greg Abbott’s first “border czar,” helping to oversee his plans to bus migrants to Democratic cities and to use razor wire and buoys to prevent their entry.
Still, new policies and directives from President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have made it easier for immigrants to face arrest and detention, putting many families and communities in distress.
Federal law allows immigration agents to board vehicles to check immigration papers within 100 miles of the U.S.’s borders, including along the East and West Coasts and along the Great Lakes.
That area encompasses two-thirds of the U.S. population, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as Alice, which is about 40 miles west of Corpus Christi and about 90 miles east of the Mexican border. Of its roughly 17,500 residents, 88% identify as Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since taking office again, Trump has followed through campaign promises to deport migrants on a massive scale with a suite of executive orders to add more U.S. troops to the border and end birthright citizenship for children of noncitizens, a right that has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years.
Several states are now suing the Trump administration over the birthright order, and it remains paused while litigation proceeds.
Trump also rolled back Biden-era guidance that limited immigration arrests near “sensitive areas” such as schools, hospitals and churches.
Abbott, too, has taken actions to make it easier to deport immigrants since the start of the year. He ordered the Texas National Guard to deploy 400 more troops near the border, along with military transport planes and helicopters, to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents with enforcement.
Abbott also signed a federal memo from the Trump administration deputizing the Texas National Guard to arrest and help deport people without citizenship paperwork.
On Thursday evening, the Alice ISD clarified in a subsequent Facebook post that it had no knowledge of agents directly targeting buses, but made the announcement out of caution to inform parents.
“Student safety, which has always been and will continue to be our priority, was the only motivation,” the post explained.
