‘Wendy isn’t there.’ Bay Area third-graders are saddened by the expulsion of a classmate

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Third-grade teacher Diana Ortega was sitting in her school lunchroom, scrolling through social media in March when she saw a video of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents forcibly arresting and handcuffing a mother at San Francisco International Airport. Nearby, a little girl with colorful hair was watching, crying in sorrow.

Ortega, who teaches in the East Bay’s West Contra Costa Unified School District, watched the viral video a second time. Mother and daughter looked familiar. He was quiet and moved closer.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ortega said. “I didn’t want to believe that it could be what I was seeing.”

It wasn’t until another teacher sent her a still image in this video where she drowned – the child was one of her students, Wendy Godinez-Lopez, 9.

More than 650 children have been detained by ICE in California — mostly within the state — since the Trump administration introduced deportations last year, according to an EdSource analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA. More than 400 children who were detained in the province have been deported, the report said.

Wendy’s March 22 arrest and subsequent deportation caused a wave of grief and anger among students at Downer Elementary School in San Pablo, where she attended second and third grades. Some told their teachers that they were afraid to leave their homes. Others wanted to hold a protest to bring back the expelled student.

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Wendy was a shy and quiet student in Ortega’s Spanish-English immersion class who worked hard to learn her times tables, Ortega said. Wendy wrote sweet notes to her teacher saying “Te amo maestra” (I love you, teacher.) Her first language was Mam, a Mayan language from Guatemala. He studied both Spanish and English.

“He didn’t let the language be a problem for him. He did everything he could. He didn’t let it stop him or stop him from trying to participate,” said Ortega. “I was impressed by that, I thought, ‘Wow, he’s not going to be boxed in like an idiot.’ “

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A few days before the incident at the airport, Ortega had given Wendy a packet of homework to work on while visiting a relative in Florida. He told Wendy that it was too bad he was going to miss the next trip, but hopefully he could go on the next one after he got back.

But Wendy would never come back. As he and his mother, Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, walked to their gate at SFO to board their flight to Miami, TSA agents told ICE, according to the New York Times. They were detained at the airport that night, then flown to Texas the next day, where they were checked into a hotel in McAllen, and deported to Guatemala.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Wendy and her mother were first arrested near the border in Arizona in 2018, when Wendy was less than 2 years old, and then released with an order to appear in court. They attended some hearings, but not others, and were ordered to be deported in 2019 for the hearing they did not attend.

Efforts to locate Wendy and her mother were unsuccessful.

When families have final removal orders, there are ways to evict them with more notice, some experts say.

Previous administrations sometimes gave families notice before their evictions so they could wind up their affairs — sell their houses, for example, or close their bank accounts. In some cases, the government will schedule deportations after the school year to avoid disrupting children’s education, according to Michelle Brané, who led the Family Reunification Task Force of the Department of Homeland Security and was a mediator on immigration detention under the Biden administration.

“We see that even in cases where removal may be a legal, due process step, the process is cruel and harsh,” said Brané, who now heads the nonprofit organization Together and Free, which supports families seeking asylum.

Downer Elementary students organized a rally to protest the expulsion of a student from the classroom. Students at Downer Elementary organized a rally to protest the expulsion of a studentCredit: The Corner of Joy Diaz-Noriega

Wendy’s classmates are saddened by her disappearance for the spring semester.

After Wendy’s arrest, one of her classmates approached Ortega during lunch to tell her that other students said Wendy was “taken by ICE.”

Back in the classroom that day, Ortega asked how many kids had heard of Wendy or seen her on the news. Almost every hand went up. When the district social worker came to talk to the children a few days later about how they were feeling, they shared sadness, fear, anger and grief.

Over the next few days, some of the kids made cards for Wendy and left them on her desk. Then they added homemade paper flowers and Jolly Ranchers hard candy. One little girl picked flowers from the school garden and put them in a water bottle.

Even the children who did not know Wendy were upset by this news.

A note from Wendy to her teacher, Diana Ortega. Credit: Courtesy of Diana Ortega

“My students were very angry, upset, they wanted to protest, they wanted to walk out,” said fourth grade teacher Joy Diaz-Noriega.

Another student, an American citizen, told Diaz-Noriega, “I’m not going anywhere – I’m not going to school, I’m not going to the store, I’m not going to the park.”

Ortega said Wendy’s absence hurt her classmates more than when a classmate voluntarily moved or changed schools. In a way, he said, it’s like death, and like his disciples, they’re in pain. He had to remind them to use the present tense when talking about Wendy.

“I had to say, ‘You know, he’s out there, and he’s still our friend, and we can still think about him and not forget him,’ ” he said.

In April, students organized a rally to protest Wendy’s dismissal. They designed posters and wrote speeches. Ortega’s class wrote a haiku and an acrostic poem, where the first letter of each line spelled the name of a classmate:

Wendy

El color azul es su favorito (Blue is his favorite color)

No hablaba mucho (She was quiet)

Daba felicidad (She brought joy)

Yo soy su amigo (I am her friend)

During the last week of school in June, Ortega created a slideshow of photos from throughout the year for her students. And there was Wendy, pictured from the dance to La Bamba for Hispanic Heritage Month and during the school’s Halloween celebration.

In the months after the deportation, Ortega’s students reminded him of Wendy’s absence every morning he went.

“And Wendy!” they said. “There’s no Wendy.”

EdSource reporter Emma Gallegos and data reporter Daniel J. Willis contributed to this story.

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