ICE comes to the Central Coast, and people go into hiding.

A friend of mine teaches English to migrant teenagers. Four nights a week, after the kids are done working in the fields (yes, there are teens not old enough to drive out there, picking berries and weeding broccoli), they go back to their shared motel rooms, get spruced up and go to class. She teaches them basic English conversation skills. She assigns them homework that includes telling them to go up to a stranger and ask what time it is – as a means of encouraging them to talk – telling them to say “thank you” no matter how the stranger responds. She tries to say their names multiple times during the class because it’s often the only time anyone calls them by name at all.

“Sometimes all I think I do is memorize their names,” she says. “If I say their names enough times during class, they’re less invisible.”

But some of those kids have recently become totally invisible. Most from Oaxaca and Michoacan have stopped coming to class altogether. Some from El Salvador and Guatemala are still showing up. “There’s a possibility for the kids from Central America that they can get political asylum,” their teacher says. “So they’re still chancing it.”

Chancing it means living as normal a life as they can when they’re young, impoverished, uneducated and working in the agricultural fields of the Salinas Valley. Not chancing it means not going to a class that could help them improve their lives in a country they’ve risked so much to come to.

For those in the latter group, they’re not chancing it out of fear. That fear manifested in a very real way last week when word began to spread that agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were conducting sweeps all over the county. The sweeps, ICE stated in a press release, targeted “at-large criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives” in Central California.

ICE arrested 54 in all, 19 in Monterey County – seven in King City, two in Soledad, six in Greenfield and four in Salinas. As the ICE statement reads: “Since President Trump signed the Executive Orders regarding immigration enforcement priorities, ICE has arrested more than 41,000 individuals nationwide who are either known or suspected of being in the country illegally, a nearly 40-percent increase over the same period in 2016.” The deportation efforts, ICE says, “make our communities safer for everyone.”

In Salinas last week, here’s who didn’t feel safer, other than those migrant kids: a large number of parents and students in the Alisal Union School District, especially at Virginia Roca Barton School. As word of the sweeps began to spread, so too did the rumors. As the rumor had it, ICE agents were lurking near the school, waiting for dismissal time, to arrest parents who lack documents. Their presence near the school was just a rumor, but it spread like wildfire.

Alisal Union Superintendent Hector Rico says he started hearing from school administrators as parents reached out to them about what to do. Many wanted to know if they could pick up their children early.

In January, the Alisal Union board adopted a safe-haven resolution, meaning the district will protect the information of students, family members and employees from being used by the federal government to determine residency status. It also means the district won’t allow ICE to enter school property without the superintendent’s approval, or without exigent circumstances.

Rico told his staff that any parent who wanted to pick up their child early should be allowed.

“Not just last week, but since the election, our kids have been asking questions and are concerned about their families being deported,” Rico says. “The fear is there. Even at the elementary level, the general public might think they’re too young to comprehend it, but the reality is we’re seeing it.”

There are 19 fewer undocumented immigrants in Monterey County this week, with criminal convictions ranging from domestic violence and property damage to illegal entry into the country. A Salvadoran man ICE arrested in King City had a child abuse/domestic violence conviction.

Nineteen arrested, and many more undocumented afraid to go to school, or send their children.

Good thing summer’s here.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com