A man dropping off two students outside of charter schools in Chicago was arrested by federal immigration authorities this week as part of the Trump administration’s push to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
The man’s arrest during school drop-off comes as the administration says it has arrested more than 20,000 immigrants in one month.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained the man on Wednesday at around 8:15 a.m. outside of Victoria Soto High and Jovita Idar Elementary schools, according to a letter sent to families by the principals of both schools.
The letter said school officials “escorted these students away from the car and to their respective campuses” and no one was physically harmed during the incident.
The agents did not attempt to enter either school, “nor were they permitted to,” the principals said in the letter.
“We understand how stressful and upsetting this is to our school communities,” the letter said, adding that the schools would monitor activities on campus “to ensure the safest environment for all our students.”
During this school year, the campuses together serve more than 1,000 students and 98% of them identify as Latino or Hispanic, according to Acero Schools of Chicago.
An ICE spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that the man arrested in Chicago was 37-year-old Francisco Andrade-Berrera. The agency alleged Andrade-Berrera was a member of a street gang and had criminal convictions for “drug trafficking, gang loitering, and damage to property” and that he had twice previously been removed from the United States.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it was ending a policy that restricted ICE agents’ ability to arrest undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations, such as churches, schools and hospitals. The arrest alarmed some school officials and families, and comes as the administration continues to tout its efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
“Since Jan. 20, ICE has significantly increased its immigration enforcement activities,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
In fiscal year 2024, the Biden administration made 113,431 immigration arrests.
While the Trump administration has said it is prioritizing the “worst first” when it comes to arrests and deportations, the number of detainees in ICE custody without a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges increased by more than 1,800 in the first two weeks of February, representing 41% of the 4,422 total new detainees in that period, according to new data obtained by NBC News. Border czar Tom Homan and Trump officials have said those without criminal backgrounds could well get swept up in the actions and characterized anyone in the country illegally as being legitimate targets.
During fiscal year 2024 under the Biden administration, 28% of immigration arrests were of people who had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
In Arkansas, a statewide operation led to the arrest of 219 undocumented immigrants in the past three weeks, “the largest collaborative law enforcement effort to enforce immigration laws in Arkansas history,” Jonathan Ross, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said at a news conference Thursday. Ross said the 219 people arrested included people with criminal records as well as some with no criminal charges.
David Clay Fowlkes, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said at the news conference that the individuals targeted for arrest were those who “had come in contact previously with law enforcement within the last three years and for one reason or another they were not removed at that time, or they were not eligible to be removed at that time.”
Other immigrants who were residing with or in the company of the intended target at the time were also arrested, Ross said.
“I think that the majority of the individuals who are being removed are not being charged with violent criminal offenses,” he said, adding that the immigrants who were arrested in Arkansas came from 23 different countries.
