Los Angeles — With big smiles and colorful backpacks, tens of thousands of students in the Los Angeles Unified School District walked into their first day of class Thursday. But heading into this new academic year, some families say they are living in fear.
Melissa, an undocumented mother of three U.S. citizen children, said her 8-year-old is afraid.
"When we hear that agents are nearby, we run or hide, and he's scared," Melissa told CBS News.
She says she has been forced to make a plan in case she is detained and deported.
"We've spoken to our eldest," Melissa said. "He'd be in charge of his siblings. It's sad to talk about these plans."
Immigration enforcement activity has picked up across the L.A. area over the past four months. In July, federal agents on horseback swarmed MacArthur Park — which is located near multiple schools in L.A.'s Westlake neighborhood — flanked by armored vehicles and National Guard troops. Officials did not say if there were any arrests during the operation, but L.A. Mayor Karen Bass blasted the move at the time, calling it part of "a political agenda of provoking fear and terror."
Some undocumented mothers tell CBS News they are unwilling to risk sending their children to school at all.
"I'm scared because I wouldn't be able to handle getting separated from them," said Andrea, an undocumented mother. "Either if they take me and they stay here, or if they're taken and I stay here."
One particular sidewalk near downtown L.A. that children use to walk to school is right outside a Home Depot that has been frequently raided this summer. Federal agents continue to patrol this Latino-majority area surrounding MacArthur Park.
If they do not possess a signed judicial warrant, they do not have access to have a conversation with anyone, staff member or student or parent," LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told CBS News.
Carvalho says the district has taken measures to protect families, implementing safe zones outside 100 schools in Latino-majority areas where volunteers and officers will watch for federal immigration activity.
On Monday, Nathan Mejia, a 15-year-old student with disabilities, was detained by federal agents outside Arleta High School in the San Fernando Valley.
"They started pointing guns at us, then at the moment when they opened the door, my mom just told me to not move or anything," Mejia told CBS News. "I stepped out, they put me in handcuffs."
His mother told CBS Los Angeles that agents showed her a photo of a person who resembled her son, but that was not him. Mejia was quickly released.
In a social media post Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security denied that it was targeting the high school and said that "agents were conducting a targeted operation" on a "suspected MS-13 pledge with prior criminal convictions in the broader vicinity of Arleta."
The Trump administration has stressed schools will not be targeted as part of its ongoing immigration crackdown.
"This administration wants to ensure that all school children across the country, in every city from Los Angeles to D.C., can go to school safely," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing Tuesday.
According to Carvalho, in LAUSD — the second-largest school district in the nation, with more than half a million students — an estimated one in five students are part of an immigrant family, in which at least one parent is undocumented. He hopes his district's new safe zone measures are enough.
"Why have immigration enforcement actions so close to schools, where a 16-year-old, a 15-year-old, may actually be misidentified as an adult?" Carvalho asked. "Should we not have enough empathy and compassion in our hearts to spare children that type of trauma?"
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