Federal officials say they arrested around 370 people in North Carolina this week in immigration crackdowns around Charlotte and the Research Triangle.
Although local officials say border patrol agents have left, the Department of Homeland Security says “Operation Charlotte’s Web” is not ending any time soon.
According to officials, that has led many parents across North Carolina to keep their kids home from school this week, including in Durham.
“Since Monday, our attendance took a hit. And then even as early as Wednesday and Thursday, it had increased to the 29% level in terms of the percentage of students that have been absent,” said Durham Public Schools Superintendent Anthony Lewis. “And so, what we’re seeing is that parents are still choosing to keep their children at home. Then, we do recognize that this is leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday. And so, families are just making the decision just to keep those kids at home.”
5 questions with Anthony Lewis
At this point, we’re talking about one out of almost every three of your students not coming into school. Have you ever seen anything like that before?
“No, not recently. You know, we saw similar trends like this during COVID or the pandemic when schools had made a decision to close it, then families were elected to keep their kids home. But no, I haven’t seen anything like this in quite some time.”
How disruptive is it to the day for the teachers and kids who do come to school?
“That’s what I tell people. You know, I think it was [Martin Luther King Jr.] that made the quote that, ‘What impacts one directly impacts all indirectly.’ And so, it’s having a major toll on our teachers, on our students’ classmates.
“I was meeting with my superintendent student advisory council just the other night, and you could see the heaviness on them in terms of just concern for their classmates.
“And so when you think about teachers that have to do a tremendous amount of work, planning lessons for a full classroom and then maybe walk in and maybe a third of the class is there, you know, it just kind of creates some additional stress and emotion for our educators as well, because they are so concerned about the well-being of our scholars.”
The Raleigh News and Observer reported this week that community members were detained near an elementary school in Durham. Have you had any immigration agents go into your schools?
“No, we haven’t seen any immigration officials going into our schools. I will tell you that we do have protocols for any visitor, and that includes local, state and federal law enforcement agencies as well.
“We have protocols in place for visitors. We just don’t allow visitors in our building, particularly as it relates to immigration agents. If they do come on our campus, we have protocols in place.
“For example, we have to ensure that they have a signed judicial warrant, signed by a judge or a magistrate.
“The protocols allow for our administrators to then contact our legal department. We work with our sheriff’s department to make sure that our students remain safe.
“But we did have an incident, maybe a block away from one of our elementary schools, where agents did apprehend someone in an area where many of our students have to walk home. And so, you can just imagine the anxiety that that created for our scholars and families.”
What are you hearing from families? Federal law states that children have a right to a public education regardless of their immigration status. I assume that’s not reassuring to the families who are keeping their kids at home.
“Right. Agree. We first sent out some guidance and protocols to our schools back in January of 2025. And since then and within the last couple of months, we’ve been having small sessions with parents, in particular Hispanic, Latino families, just sharing with them and reassuring them that we’re doing all we can to keep our students safe and reassure them of the protocols we have in place and resources that they may need.
“From what we’re currently hearing from our families this week is that they know once the students are with us that they’re safe. It is the route to school, whether they’re walking their kids to school or walking them to the bus stop. So, it’s the to and from school that they’re concerned about. And so, as a result, they, as I mentioned, know they’re just keeping their kids at home.”
We should say that about 35% of your students are Latino and there are many people in your community in Durham, also across the country, who see this crackdown on immigration is the right thing to do. What’s your message to them as a school administrator?
“As a school administrator, as an educator over close to 25 years now, our primary role and goal is to provide a world-class education for all of our scholars.
“And so when you think about a student entering a classroom, ready to engage in learning about two digit multiplication or learning the Pythagorean theorem or the parts of the sail, it’s very difficult for them to focus on that lesson if they’re concerned about, ‘Will, I see my parents when I get home’ or ‘On my route from school or to school, will something happen to me?’
“And so it’s impacting us in a major way from the standpoint of having our students fully engaged in the lesson, first of all, fully present, but then secondly, fully engaged in the lesson because of the psychological impact it’s having on them as well as their families.”
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Will Walkey produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Michael Scotto adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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