A Texas substitute teacher has come under fire after inviting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers raid his school because his students “don’t even speak English.”
Fort Worth Independent School District officials launched an investigation after the substitute teacher responded to a post by ICE on social media giving an update on arrests for Jan. 23.
The teacher, who was not publicly identified but had the X username @Hookem232, called for agents to “come to Fort Worth, TX to Northside High School,” according to the Dallas Morning News.
“I have many students who don’t even speak English and they are in 10th-11th grade. They have to communicate through their iPhone translator with me. The [U.S. Department of Education] should totally overhaul our school system in Texas too,” the post added.
School Board President Roxanne Martinez sought to reassure parents about whether ICE was going to target the school district.
“Please be assured that we are taking this situation very seriously and are committed to resolving it as quickly as possible,” she said.
Two-thirds of Fort Worth public school students are Hispanic and more than one in three students is learning English as a second language.
Meanwhile, officials have not named the substitute teacher who made the post, but said the instructor will not be teaching while the posts are investigated.
Interim Superintendent Karen Molinar also sent out a message saying the district would be “supporting all families.”
The social media post comes as President Trump issued a directive allowing ICE to operate at “sensitive areas” including schools and churches.
It also comes as the president weighs sending upwards of 10,000 troops to secure the US-Mexico border after former President Joe Biden’s administration allowed some 8 million migrants to enter the US illegally in four years.
It’s not the first time a Fort Worth ISD teacher has come under fire for anti-immigrant sentiments.
In 2019, Georgia Clark, an English teacher at Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, wrote several posts on X, then Twitter, asking Trump to help boot “illegal students from Mexico” from her school.
“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico,” one of her tweets read. “Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them.”
In another message, Clark said she did “not know what to do” to address the problem and provided two phone numbers to contact her. She said her earlier attempts to “remove the illegals” were rebuffed by local and federal authorities in Fort Worth.
“The district knows about the issue and turns a blind eye to it,” Clark tweeted.
She also told Trump in another tweet that she needed “protection from recrimination” if and when steps to remove the undocumented students were taken.
“I contacted the Texas Education Agency and then my teacher organization,” Clark wrote. “Texans will not protect whistle blowers [sic]. The Mexicans refused to honor our flag.”
Clark later told district officials she thought the messages were private and didn’t intend for them to be public. She initially was placed on administrative leave with pay before the school district voted to fire her.
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