"Trump border czar’s town stood up for 3 kids detained by ICE — and won"
- slcnydems
- Apr 10
- 7 min read
"In the New York village of Sackets Harbor, teachers launched a days-long effort to secure the release of three students. Less than two weeks later, the students were back in their classrooms.
THE NORTH COUNTRY, N.Y. — Shortly after dawn on March 27, dozens of federal agents descended on a dairy farm in this Upstate New York region that President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, calls home, looking for a South African immigrant accused of distributing child pornography.
They soon found the man, who was in the country legally on a visa for temporary agricultural workers. But after they arrested him, they continued their search of the farm, which is home to a 'MAKE MILK GREAT AGAIN' sign.
They ultimately detained seven more immigrants, including a woman and her three children, who were living on the property. The officers hustled the family into a van and drove off.
Roughly 35 miles away that same Thursday, Jaime Cook’s phone rang. The principal of Sackets Harbor Central School was getting ready to attend a meeting off-campus instead of making her typical 45-minute commute to the single-building school, which serves roughly 400 students in the town of about 1,400 residents on the shores of Lake Ontario.
One of Cook’s teachers, speaking through tears, told her that three students — in the third, 10th and 11th grades — had been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel.
Cook gasped. The three students had been saying for weeks that they were afraid they’d be taken. Teachers and other school officials had told them not to worry: ICE was after criminals — not children.
That morning, Cook and several teachers launched what became a days-long, town-wide effort to secure the release of the children and their mother. This account of that campaign is based on interviews with more than a dozen school officials, community members, immigration advocates and government officials.
Here, in this small town in a county that Trump won by double digits in the 2024 election, most people united in condemning the detention of the children — a sign that, even here, in the town the president’s border czar calls home, some Americans see the detention of schoolchildren as a line that should not be crossed.
Teachers and school officials, in shock and initially unsure what to do, talked among themselves and resolved not to cry in front of their students. But within a few hours, they decided to start seeking answers. The local teachers union sent around a list with the phone numbers and email addresses for officials across New York, and school officials began to make calls in between classes and during planning periods. In their first calls and emails, they reached out to local, state and federal representatives and advocacy groups and pleaded for help to get the children and their mother released.
The family had been attending court hearings in New York to secure legal status, according to local officials and immigration advocates tracking the case. School officials and others who know the children and their mother declined to share their names or their country of origin for fear they could face attacks if released from detention. ICE referred a request for comment to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP did not respond.
Scott Gray, a Republican state assemblyman who represents the area, told a local TV station that the family had attended an initial court hearing and had another scheduled. He also said it was his understanding that there wasn’t a deportation order for the family.
'Our thought was: Let’s just call them and tell them that our kids were taken and it was a mistake, and we don’t know what happened and we need help to get them back,' said Jonna St. Croix, a social studies teacher at the school and president of the Sackets Harbor Teachers’ Association.
That afternoon, local officials told the Sackets Harbor Central School District superintendent that they were taking care of the situation. The superintendent passed along that information, and the teachers paused their effort.
But days passed without further information, and the teachers remained worried — and impatient. That weekend, one teacher figured out how to use ICE’s online detainee locator system, and soon found that the students had been transferred to a family detention center in Texas. Another teacher began to receive daily calls from the eldest student who had been detained. The student admitted she and her family were terrified of being deported.
The teachers were worried. 'We were like, ‘Nobody’s helping us. They’re further away from us now,’' St. Croix recalled.
An immigration advocacy group advised the teachers that their 'best bet was to draw some attention,' she added.
So that Sunday, the teachers started making calls again, reaching out to even more officials and media outlets to draw attention to the children’s plight. By their estimates, they made at least a few hundred calls and contacted more than 100 officials at different levels of government in the week following the students’ detention.
Amid the flurry of calls, St. Croix was connected with the local Democratic Party group, the Jefferson County Democratic Committee, which soon announced that it would organize a rally calling for the family’s release. Local media picked up the story, and comments sections and Facebook pages were flooded with heated debate about the Trump administration’s immigration policy and the merits of the case.
On the Facebook page of the local CBS affiliate, WWNY-TV 7, hundreds of commenters ridiculed people who supported the students or planned to attend the rally. 'You will be protesting for ZERO reason, and it will change absolutely NOTHING,' one commenter wrote. 'Also, illegal is illegal, no matter how much you whine and cry about it.'
By Tuesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) was publicly slamming ICE’s detention of the family, calling it 'plain cruel' and saying she 'cannot think of any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade, from their Sackets Harbor home.'
The next day, Homan — who owns a home in Sackets Harbor, grew up in the town of West Carthage roughly 30 miles east and whom many in the small community personally know — sat down for an interview with WWNY to outline his views on the episode. He defended ICE’s actions, arguing that agents had the right to enter the family’s home because it was within WiFi range of the house where the man for whom they had a search warrant lived.
Homan said that the children were taken as potential victims of the suspect or material witnesses in the case and that they were not being held at a 'detention center' but an 'open-air campus.' He repeatedly said they had been taken in to ensure they were 'safe.'
Homan was one of the architects of Trump’s first-term policy to separate immigrant families at the southern border. Trump ended the policy after facing intense political pressure and condemnation, including from some Republicans. But his administration continued detaining families with children, a practice the Biden administration stopped and the second Trump administration has resumed.
Cook was angry as she watched Homan’s full interview online. Much of what he said was not true, she said. It did not match what the eldest student had told the teacher in their daily calls.
She decided to release a statement to the press. 'We are in direct communication with our students. Let me be clear: They are not ‘being medically evaluated.’ They are not being ‘questioned as potential victims.’ Calling a detention center by another name does not change what it is,' she said. 'We deserve better than spin and misinformation.'
By Thursday, Corey Decillis’s phone was ringing nonstop. The march organizer and chair of the Jefferson County Democratic Committee had lost count of the number of messages he had seen on the group’s Facebook page from people saying they were going to attend the march. He hoped all that attention would translate into the children being released.
Decillis’s primary concern, he said, was ensuring the rally remained focused on the children. Although he strongly opposes the Trump administration’s immigration policy, he didn’t want a march in support of a detained family to turn into a raucous protest of the president.
'It’s about these kids and how these kids were treated. Yes, that really is political. Obviously, this is the administration’s policy on immigration, but I don’t think this is the time or place,' Decillis said. 'This community wants these kids back. That’s what we’re trying to support.'
Local officials took extra precautions, bringing in additional law enforcement officers ahead of the march to reduce the risk of any clash between the rallygoers and counterprotesters.
On that cloudy Saturday afternoon, the town transformed as roughly 1,000 rallygoers — many locals, but some traveling from as far away as Manhattan — congregated outside the Sackets Harbor Visitor Center, with many holding up signs in support of the children. Some of the signs read: 'Return the children. Deport Homan!' “'t’s not about left or right. It’s about what is right' and 'Due process makes America great.'
During Decillis’s opening remarks, a man wearing a T-shirt with Trump’s mug shot and holding up a sign that read 'Tom Homan — local hero' yelled, 'We support you, Tom!' But he was largely drowned out by cheers from the rallygoers.
Later, attendees — many chanting 'Bring them home' and 'This is what democracy looks like' — marched against intense winds to Homan’s block. Fewer than a dozen Trump supporters stood near his house, holding Trump flags and expressing support for ICE’s work.
After the march, organizers said they were relieved to see the rally go off without any issues and to see so many people turn out in support of the students. Still, they wondered whether their efforts would result in the children’s release.
Less than two days later, Cook had her answer.
Cook woke up Monday morning to a missed call from the teacher who had been in contact with the family. The teacher had received a call in the middle of the night from ICE confirming that the family was being released.
'It gave me goose bumps to hear. As it does now. I’m just in awe of what a small community can pull off,' Cook said.
Back at school, the news of the family’s release — and imminent return to Sackets Harbor — hadn’t fully sunk in for Cook by Monday afternoon. She was too sleep-deprived. It wouldn’t feel real until she saw the three children sitting at their desks.
'It just feels world-altering. My faith in community has been reinforced,' Cook said, pausing to take a breath and choose her words. 'I’m just amazed at what a small group of people can accomplish if they just refuse to give up.'
On Wednesday morning, the students were back in their classrooms."
Comments