After ICE took students’ parents, these teachers began rising at dawn to keep watch: ‘We said, hell no’

Members of the group Unión del Barrio and the Association of Raza Educators prepare for a morning patrol in San Diego in early October. Photograph: Amanda Ulrich/The Guardian

Three teachers drove through a quiet neighborhood in southern San Diego, the sun not yet fully up over the horizon. They drank coffee, talked about their jobs. The start of the school day was still an hour or two away.

Suddenly, mid-conversation, they spotted something: what appeared to be an undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, driving right past them.