I once worked in a school that had a rough tough reputation. It was a fact that some of our students were members of gangs even though they were only in the seventh and eighth grade. They mostly kept their affiliations with trouble out of the classrooms and did their not so nice deeds after school and off campus. Still, some of them could be a handful in terms of behavior. They were often facing unimaginable difficulties at home and now and again they would act out, mostly by talking back to teachers attempting to control their outbursts. The language that they used was not always appropriate for a classroom setting, but rather peppered with expletives and words that made us squirm. 

I had a few encounters with such situations that I was usually able to tone down by remaining calm rather than throwing gasoline on an already intense moment. I suppose that my soft voice and the fact that I truly loved and cared about even the most difficult students provided me with an uncanny ability to forestall the worst possible situations and get back to the job of teaching. Sadly I knew that not all educators had the kind of self control that I possessed so now and again a tense situation would arise. One such thing happened one day during the passing period when students were moving from one classroom to another. 

I was at my classroom door when I heard a student and a teacher yelling angrily at each other. The student did indeed throw around some foul language in his audacious retorts but then so did the teacher. I sensed that the moment was getting out of control so I made my way down the hallway to see if I might help to cool down the tension that was brewing. Before I reached the two who were getting more and more shrill chaos broke out. 

The teacher grabbed the student by the back of his collar and without hesitation slammed his head against one of the lockers with a bang that made the whole row rattle. It was a shocking thing to see because every teacher knows that we are supposed to keep our hands off of our students. The only justification for being physical would be to defend ourselves but this student had done nothing to indicate that he was going to hurt the teacher. Before I could rush over the teacher then threw the young man onto the floor face first and put his foot on the stunned student to keep him from popping back up. 

My reaction was to run to the office to tell the principal what was happening. By the time that we got back to the scene the boy was sitting up and crying while the teacher was directing all of the bystanders to go to their classrooms and get out of the hall. It was evident that the boy had been injured so the principal called for the nurse and then asked the teacher to accompany him to the office. 

Before an hour had passed other teachers and many students had gone to the office to report what they had seen. Every witness insisted that it had been the teacher who suddenly lost his cool and purposely inflicted physical pain on the student. In spite of whatever had started the foray, the teacher had been out of line. 

I expected the principal to ask the teacher to stay home for a couple of days and then accept a write up to be kept in his file indicating that he had not followed the protocols to which we had all agreed. Instead we never heard from the teacher again. It would be much later, when I became an administrator, that I would find out that the principal and the higher ups in the school district had decided to cancel the man’s contract fearing that he was a loose canon and a danger to his students.  

I have been thinking about that incident as I watch members of ICE forcing often brutish behavior on their victims. Sometimes they go after American citizens, sometimes their targets are actually illegals. Many times their actions are brutal and not justified as we have witnessed in real time. The truth is that they should be able in most situations to do their jobs without piling on individuals and physically harming them. They don’t seem to have the proper training for their jobs and their superiors don’t appear to be inclined to punish them when they step over the line of decency.

There was a time when ICE agents showed up wearing jackets with official identification and lettering emblazoned on them. They were not in military camo with boots and masks carrying an assortment of guns that seem more like something storm troopers would have. Their tactics tend to be brutal and often done without any kind of reasoning. They are taking people out of cars just because they look like they might be illegal. They are rushing into schools and terrorizing both the students and the teachers. They are going door to door looking for possible illegals. Their methods don’t align with how things should be done properly. 

Other presidents, and in particular President Obama, have managed to deport more illegals than the present group is doing without terrorizing the population. We are not a nation of lawlessness. We should not have citizens cowering in fear of being unjustly detained or even hurt by ICE and yet even a ninety seven year old man like my father-in-law is now living in fear that he will be mistaken for an illegal because he has a decidedly Spanish accent. In truth he was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he has been an American citizen from birth. He served in the Army and fought in Korea. He like far too many others are watching the tactics of ICE and worrying that somehow they might be mistaken and subjected to the ire of an untrained and irrational person who gets a high on hurting others. 

It’s time that we call out all of the members of ICE who have crossed the Rubicon into a lawless way of doing things. If a teacher unable to control his temper can be fired, then someone supposedly enforcing the law who turns to violence without aforethought should not be on the streets of America. I challenge our president to request the members of ICE to take off the military gear and the masks and report for proper training now!