Boston Superintendent of Schools Brenda Cassellius. (Boston Public Schools)
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Boston's new Superintendent of Schools Brenda Cassellius said the city's public school students will not be exposed to federal immigration authorities under her watch.
Her comments come a day after the group Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) said in a statement that "at least 135 student incident reports generated by BPS have been made accessible to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)" since 2014.
LCR filed suit last year after an East Boston high school student was arrested by ICE and then deported. The group said the documents showing the interactions between ICE and Boston Public Schools came to light as a result of that suit, and called the arrangement a "school-to-deportation pipeline."
But Cassellius, who has been on the job since May, said what happened to that East Boston student won't happen again.
"Our number-one priority is obviously going to be that our kids are safe in school," she said. "We do not share information with the federal authorities at all."
Cassellius said she's been clear with her staff since taking the superintendent job that schools were not to share information about students with the federal government.
"I read about these things when I was interviewing," Cassellius said. "I know that the community is very nervous about these things. Parents want to send their kids, and to know that their kids are safe when they come through our doors, and that's very very important to me, it's important to our teachers, our whole entire community. So, absolutely not, we would not do that."
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has long said the city will not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
WBZ NewsRadio's Karyn Regal (@Karynregal) reports
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