{"id":72411,"date":"2025-12-02T03:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72411\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T03:58:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:58:17","slug":"winooski-second-grader-in-ice-detention-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72411\/","title":{"rendered":"Winooski Second Grader in ICE Detention in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

Winooski School District officials called the 7-year-old boy\u2019s home when he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWe\u2019re in a bit of a rush mode to make sure they don\u2019t get separated,\u201d Chavarria said.<\/p>\n

The school activated its \u201crapid response\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The district is awarding the child\u2019s father, who is still in Winooski, $1,000 from an emergency fund paid for by private donations, Chavarria said.<\/p>\n

The student\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d he said in Spanish. He doesn\u2019t know where or why his wife and son were detained.<\/p>\n

Winooski is Vermont\u2019s 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\u2019 access to school grounds.<\/p>\n

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

Chavarria posted a statement on Monday morning to the school district\u2019s social media pages condemning the student\u2019s detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is yet another example of the terror our families face simply by doing things other people take for granted \u2014 going to school, shopping for groceries, or just visiting family,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Winooski student in the second grade is in immigration detention in Texas after he and his mother…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36197,27,29,28,92],"class_list":["post-72411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-lead-story","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}