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Phoenix School Board Restricts ICE From School Grounds

January 29, 2025

By Staff Reporter |

The Phoenix Union High School District (PXU) passed a resolution declaring its right to refuse entry to federal immigration officials on school grounds. 

During a special meeting last Friday, the PXU Governing Board unanimously passed its “Safe Zone Resolution” which designated PXU as a “Safe Zone.” 

Under this “Safe Zone” designation, the governing board claimed, PXU officials reserve the right to deny Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) entry to any campus. 

The governing board required ICE — as well as any state or local law enforcement agencies acting for ICE — to submit a request to Superintendent Thea Andrade or her designee for review. PXU asserted that Andrade or her designee had the authority to review whether each requested instance of campus access by immigration enforcement would be permitted by law or would require a judicial warrant. 

Similarly, PXU required immigration enforcement agents to go through Andrade’s office to request student information.

PXU further claimed in its resolution that their district doesn’t maintain any data relating to students’ immigration status, characterizing the distinction as “potentially discriminatory” and “irrelevant” to education. The district declared that all students “regardless of immigration status” had a right to free public K-12 classrooms, even claiming that illegal alien minors had “other legal grounds for presence” in the country. The district resolution didn’t clarify what those were. 

“[F]ederal immigration law enforcement activities, on or around District property and transportation routes, whether by surveillance, interview, demand for information, arrest, detention, or any other means, harmfully disrupt the learning environment to which all students, regardless of immigration status, are entitled and significantly interfere with the ability of all students, including U.S. citizen students and students who hold other legal grounds for presence in the U.S., to access a free public K-12 education,” stated the resolution. 

The resolution was submitted before the board for approval by PXU general counsel, Eileen D. Fernandez. 

Fernandez formerly served as the associate general counsel for Orange County Public Schools from 2010 to 2021. 

The Trump administration has already indicated its intent to bring accountability to those who hinder immigration enforcement efforts.

The day after Trump’s inauguration last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an internal memo warning that all laws and actions “that threaten to impede” the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives were to be considered threats to public safety and national security. 

The DOJ directed its Civil Division within the Office of the Associate Attorney General to identify and take legal action against state and local laws, policies, and activities serving as noncompliance to the Trump administration’s immigration initiative. 

That memo also launched investigations into state or local law enforcement officials believed to be interfering with immigration enforcement. 

“[I]n the absence of unusual facts, prosecutorial discretion at the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices is bounded by the core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses,” stated the memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. 

Bove’s memo declared that all state and local actors were required by the Constitution and federal law to comply with Trump’s immigration enforcement initiatives. The DOJ said that noncompliance would trigger federal investigations and, likely, prosecutions. 

“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests pursuant to, for example, the President’s extensive Article II authority with respect to foreign affairs and national security, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Alien Enemies Act,” stated the memo. 

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