Jamul-Dulzura Union School District officials verified that two bus routes were temporarily disrupted in the past two days when migrants tried to get on board in the town of Jamul in the East County area.
Parents in a small town in San Diego County are raising concerns about their children’s safety after more than 20 illegal immigrants tried to board school buses on two separate occasions.
“[My son] said these adults — they weren’t kids — had backpacks on, and they were trying to get on [his bus] … He said there was a lot of them,” Nicole Cardinale, whose 8-year-old son was on one of the busses, told FOX 5 San Diego. “It was definitely really scary.”
Jamul-Dulzura Union School District officials verified that two bus routes were temporarily disrupted in the past two days when migrants tried to get on board in the town of Jamul in the East County area.
The first incident occurred on Route A on Tuesday afternoon near the junction of Highway 94 and Cochera Via when a group of three men were walking in the middle of the highway and attempted to stop the bus and then directed the driver to “go around” them.
The following day, a group of about 20 illegal immigrants tried to enter the second bus on Route B as it was picking up students before school.
“It’s just scary said that these kids are put into this situation,” Cardinale said. “If those 20 people would have gotten onto the bus and tried to take over the bus, and these kids and the bus driver could have been in real danger.”
Superintendent Liz Bystedt told local media that parents who were present at the site assisted the bus driver in confirming the students’ safety and preventing the migrants from getting on the bus.
Bystedt said buses will drive past stops where migrants are present and proceed to the next stop “for the safety of students and bus drivers.”
“Please stay [vigilant] and if the bus drives by, please follow the bus to pick up your child at the next stop,” adding that the district’s director of maintenance and operations followed the buses to “ensure that everything was quiet.”
But parents are now demanding district officials create a better safety plan to protect their children.
“We don’t know who these people are, we don’t know if they have a criminal history, what their background is,” Jeremy Adams, a parent, told Fox 5 San Diego.
The San Diego Sheriff’s Office launched a follow-up investigation to determine if a criminal act occurred.
“The Sheriff’s Office takes issues regarding student safety very seriously and are working with the school district in order to keep the students and our community safe,” Kimberly King with the Sheriff’s Department responded to FOX 5/KUSI in a statement.
Critics are blaming what they see as a lack of success in managing the border under the Biden Administration policies with Vice President Kamala Harris, who the president labeled “Border Czar.”
“Thanks to the current administration, every community is now a border community, but there are a lot of true border communities deserving of the same security all Americans should expect,” Andrew R. Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote.
“At a bus stop on an isolated stretch of road in California, parents and their children aren’t being protected from illegal migration, and for that I blame the administration as much as I blame the migrants,” he added.
