Parents in the Dunkirk City Schools and Jamestown Public Schools last week received a letter from the district detailing what someone who is the subject of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement action should do.

Such a letter shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place given the limitations Dr. Kevin Whitaker discussed with The Post-Journal and WRFA-LP following last week’s school board meeting.

Despite Trump’s change of sensitive location guidelines, Whitaker said there are still limits that govern what law enforcement can do in schools, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He said a judicial subpoena is required for federal, state or local law enforcement to come into school to arrest, question or detain a student unless officers are following a student into a school building after witnessing a crime. The Federal Education Right To Privacy Act doesn’t allow law enforcement to see student records without a judicial subpoena.

Dunkirk Superintendent Michael Mansfield communicated a similar message in a memo.

President Donald Trump’s change to longtime guidelines that restricted ICE from operating at “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches or hospitals has worried migrants and advocates who fear children will be traumatized by seeing their parents arrested in the drop-off line at school or that migrants needing medical care won’t go to the hospital for fear of arrest.

In our opinion the sensitive location changes the president has made should be revisited. One never knows what one will encounter during an ICE encounter. They may be peaceful. They may not. Immigration enforcement should not place bystanders at risk – and ICE enforcement during pick-up and drop-off times at school would indeed place innocent bystanders at risk. It also risks traumatizing both children of immigrants but other children as well.

While there is no doubt the United States must get its immigration problem under control, schools and other places of assembly should remain off-limits.