A Winooski student in the second grade is in immigration detention in Texas after he and his mother were detained while traveling over the holiday weekend, according to district superintendent Wilmer Chavarria.

Winooski School District officials called the 7-year-old boy’s home when he didn’t show up for school on Monday. They learned from his father that he had been unable to contact the boy and his mother after they left home on Thursday. The family is originally from Ecuador.

The boy, who attends JFK Elementary, is the first Winooski School District student to be detained by immigration officials this year, Chavarria said.

“We’re in a bit of a rush mode to make sure they don’t get separated,” Chavarria said.

The school activated its “rapid response” protocol to try to locate the child and help his family with legal support. They were able to find the boy and his mother in a family detention facility in Texas and speak with them briefly over the phone.

The district is awarding the child’s father, who is still in Winooski, $1,000 from an emergency fund paid for by private donations, Chavarria said.

The student’s father told Seven Days that the family had been in the U.S. for three years and Winooski for about two months. They were in the process of applying for asylum, said the father, who asked for anonymity.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said in Spanish. He doesn’t know where or why his wife and son were detained.

Winooski is Vermont’s most diverse school district, and Chavarria, a native of Nicaragua, has been an outspoken supporter of immigrant students. The district passed a sanctuary schools policy earlier this year aimed at restricting immigration agents’ access to school grounds.

Chavarria, who is a U.S. citizen, was also detained by federal agents for hours in July while returning from a visit to his family in Nicaragua.

Chavarria posted a statement on Monday morning to the school district’s social media pages condemning the student’s detention.

“This is yet another example of the terror our families face simply by doing things other people take for granted — going to school, shopping for groceries, or just visiting family,” he wrote. “I call for their immediate release and for the U.S. government to bring basic humanity and due process back. Our 2nd grader should be in his classroom, not in a detention cell.”