School Town of Highland school officials canceled two outdoor eighth grade field trips to Chicago’s Millennium Park out of caution due to possible ICE activity and protests.
“…we as a district have decided we do not feel safe taking our students into Chicago for the planned outing to Millennium Park,” Highland Middle School Principal Scheryl Corman told parents in a Sept. 30 email.
Instead, the students will make a trip to the University of Notre Dame in South Bend. The Chicago trips had been planned for Oct. 3 and Oct. 16.
“This was not a real controlled environment, so we did it just out of an abundance of caution,” said Superintendent Brian Smith on Friday.
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“We didn’t want our kids to be in the middle of anything. We can control that in school.”
Officials from ICE and the City of Chicago did not return requests for comment.
In recent weeks, protests against President Trump’s immigration policies and actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have escalated, but primarily at an immigrant detention center in Broadview, a village in Cook County about 12 miles west of Chicago.
Demonstrators and Illinois State Police clashed there Friday morning and one person was arrested, according to a report.
During other protests in Broadview, federal agents deployed chemical agents to stem demonstrations during their operations in the Chicago area.
A video captured Sunday at Millennium Park showed a mother, father and their two children being detained by federal agents during an outing. The mother, Noemi Chavez, and her 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were released from custody on Wednesday pending a government response to their habeas corpus petition, but the father, Jaime Ramirez, was transferred to a Texas immigration facility and is facing possible deportation to Guatemala. The family is seeking asylum.
Trump has also threatened repeatedly to send federal National Guard troops to Chicago, triggering anger and pushback from Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
Smith said the outdoor nature of the field trip is what worried school officials.
“It’s not that we won’t ever go back to Chicago. We wouldn’t have been worried about museums. As educators, we try to control the environment. So, we said, ‘let’s pivot, give them a safe environment’.”
Smith said the Millennium Park trip was a planned language arts writing exercise that meshed with state standards. Kids would see the park and the Bean sculpture and write about their observations.
“We only let our kids go on a few field trips,” Smith said. “We think some are very valuable. We’ve certainly taken advantage of Chicago with its great museums and other things.”
Smith said students benefit from seeing different cultural sites outside of school.
“It doesn’t mean we’re not ever going back to Chicago.”
Some officials in other Northwest Indiana school districts, including Duneland, Hobart and River Forest, said they don’t have any trips planned.
Others said no Chicago trips have been canceled.
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.