Ingrid Villeda and Olga drove through southside neighborhoods of Los Angeles at 6.58 am as the Los Angeles Unified School District opened the school year, part of a volunteer effort to warn families about possible immigration sweeps. Villeda, an elementary teacher, said, "They can’t take any of our children."
Ingrid Villeda on southside streets
Villeda photographed the license plates of one of two black pickup trucks because she and Olga suspected the vehicles could belong to ICE agents. They were on patrol before classes started at hundreds of Los Angeles schools, looking for signs that families might need to be warned before they reached campus.
Olga said, "We do it because this affects our families, our children. Their parents are afraid to go out. But if we know something is happening in the community, we can warn them," adding that, "Twice they’ve been a few blocks from here and they picked someone up."
Los Angeles Unified School District patrols
The patrols are part of a network made up of teachers, school staff, activists and community members across Los Angeles. Ingrid Villeda and Olga said they did not miss a single day last school year of what they call community patrols, and the work now continues at the start of a school year in a district serving more than 370,000 students, about 70% of them Hispanic.
The effort is aimed at keeping students and parents from being detained by immigration officers on the way to or from school. Since last year, ICE agents have detained at least two students and, according to activists, several parents connected to Los Angeles Unified School District schools.
ICE and Arleta High School
The patrols gained urgency after the administration of Donald Trump intensified its plan of mass arrests and deportations last summer. In August 2025, a 15-year-old Hispanic teen with special needs was held at gunpoint outside Arleta High School and later released after agents spoke with family members, school officials and local police.
Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero Cruz, 18, was also detained after masked agents intercepted him while he was walking his dog. He was a student at Reseda Charter High School, taken first to Adelanto and later transferred to another immigration facility in Arizona without his parents’ knowledge, with authorities at one point considering a detention center in Louisiana.
ICE already has a contentious history with the Los Angeles Unified School District, and the patrols are the local answer to that record. The immediate question is how many ICE patrols or enforcement actions are actually taking place around Los Angeles schools now, because the volunteers are still going out before class as families decide how safe the school run feels.
