LAUSD: No ICE Without a Judge’s Signature — Students Return to Class as Volunteers Set Up ICE Watch Patrols

Balloons framed the entrance and cumbia music played as staff waved pom-poms for arriving students at Maya Angelou Community Senior High School in South Park on Wednesday. Hours earlier, before the first bell, teachers and neighborhood volunteers had already walked the surrounding blocks to confirm the paths kids take to campus were clear of federal immigration agents, according to LA Public Press.

The scene played out across Los Angeles this week as roughly 400,000 students in LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest public school system, began the 2026-2027 year — a return shaped, once again, by an intensified federal immigration crackdown and by a volunteer network built to watch for it.

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Superintendent Andrés E. Chait, who took over the district in late June, laid out a set of campus safety rules built around one legal threshold in an interview with LA Public Press. “Short of a judicial warrant, we do not grant access to immigration enforcement agents,” Chait said. A district spokesperson added that no agent attempted to enter an LAUSD campus during the 2025-2026 school year — a change from April 2025, when agents tried to enter two South LA elementary schools and were turned away by administrators.

The distinction carries real legal weight. Immigration agents typically carry administrative warrants signed by an immigration officer rather than a judge — paperwork that, according to a school-leader explainer from the National Association of Elementary School Principals, does not obligate staff to grant entry to non-public areas of a campus. A judicial warrant is different: signed by a federal judge on a showing of probable cause and naming a specific person or place, which is why only that version can legally compel a school to let agents in, per guidance from the ACLU of Pennsylvania describing the same federal standard that applies nationwide. In practice, front-office staff at LAUSD are trained to check for a court name and a judge’s signature before opening any door, and to decline if either is missing. Chait said each campus can also send a family alert and lock down if agents are reported nearby.

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