When two men bearing federal badges showed up at the entrance of a Chicago public school on Friday morning, school employees did what they had been trained to do.
Believing that the men were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the employees refused to allow them into the school, John H. Hamline Elementary, which enrolls children in kindergarten through eighth grade in a mostly-Latino neighborhood on the city’s southwest side.
The school immediately notified officials at Chicago Public Schools, which quickly released a statement.
“The ICE agents were not allowed into the school and were not permitted to speak to any students or staff,” the statement said.
But the school was mistaken: The agents were actually from the Secret Service, not ICE. They were investigating a threat against someone their agency had been assigned to protect, relating to the TikTok ban, a Secret Service spokesman said hours later.
The spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, declined to name the person who was threatened. The agents had gone to a nearby home to try to speak to a minor, and then had tried the school, unsuccessfully.
But the correction came too late to stem the panic and fear that had already set in around Chicago over rumored immigration raids. All week, many residents had been on edge over the Trump administration’s vows to deport unauthorized immigrants, worried that ICE agents might at any moment arrive at workplaces, churches, even schools.
“It seems that this was a very large miscommunication,” Mr. Guglielmi said in an interview.
Mr. Guglielmi said that the agents had identified themselves as being from the Secret Service, and that their badges had been stamped with the words “Department of Homeland Security.”
“I just want to make it clear — the Secret Service will never investigate immigration matters,” he said. He noted that the agency had a consistent presence in Chicago, where former President Barack Obama still owns a home.
A spokeswoman for ICE said that there had been no immigration enforcement action at or near the school.
Some school systems in states like New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois reached out to parents on Friday to try to reassure them that federal agents would not be allowed on school grounds without a judicial warrant.
In Chicago, as in other jurisdictions that limit how much local officials can cooperate with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, schools do not ask parents about their children’s immigration status.
Outside of John H. Hamline Elementary in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, several parents arrived to pull their children out of class early, as erroneous reports spread in texts and on Facebook that immigration agents were at the school. Even Gov. JB Pritzker chimed in on social media, referring to reports of “raids” at an elementary school.
“Within an hour of what was happening, the community got together,” said Berto Aguayo, a community organizer who rushed to the school as soon as he heard that ICE agents had been there.
Mr. Aguayo handed out leaflets in English and Spanish advising people of their rights, which immigration advocates have been doing all week.
“We want to make sure parents feel safe sending their kids to school,” he said.
Dana Goldstein contributed reporting.
