When federal agents arrived at two Los Angeles elementary schools last week to conduct welfare checks on students who the agents said were undocumented, fear and outrage spread among parents, teachers and administrators.
For the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the visit by federal agents was something more. It was personal.
Alberto Carvalho, the leader of the second-largest public school system in the country, was once undocumented, too.
“Their journey is no different than my own,” Mr. Carvalho said in an interview, referring to the estimated one in four migrant students who are believed to be undocumented in his district. “Maybe the country of origin is different, but in many, many instances, the journey is exactly the same.”
At a news conference after the visit, he condemned the agents’ actions. His speech drew national attention on social media, and his acknowledgment of his own former status as undocumented represented a rare moment in an era of immigration crackdowns.
Mr. Carvalho told those gathered outside the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce that if it sounded like he was coming across with “a certain degree of contempt and anger,” that was because he was.
“I’m still mystified as to how a first, second, third, fourth or sixth grader would pose any type of risk to the national security of our nation.”
The agents, who were with the Homeland Security Investigations agency, were ultimately turned away from the two schools — the Russell and Lillian Street elementary schools in the Florence-Graham neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the agency has been conducting welfare checks on children who came across the border unaccompanied “to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused and sex trafficked.”
Mr. Carvalho, 59, questioned the agents’ handling of their visit. When asked by district staff members to produce their IDs, Mr. Carvalho said, the agents concealed them.
“And then they lied,” Mr. Carvalho said. “They blatantly lied when they asserted to the principals in both schools that they had the children’s parents’ authorization for them to be there and to have access to the children.”
Ms. McLaughlin said that any claims that the agents lied were false.
“Our law enforcement clearly identified themselves and made it clear this was a welfare check and not an immigration enforcement action,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
The attempt by federal agents to enter Los Angeles schools prompted more than a dozen members of Congress to write a letter to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. They asked her to justify the operation in Los Angeles and to stop immigration enforcement activity that focuses on children who do not pose public safety threats.
“If your agents attempted to conceal their identities, attempted to enter school facilities on false pretenses, or attempted to lie to LAUSD staff, you undermine public safety,” the letter read.
Mr. Carvalho was born and grew up in Portugal. He was one of six children, and he described being raised in a “poor environment” by parents who had no education beyond the third grade. Two of his siblings died young, in part, he said, “due to lack of access to good health care.”
So after he graduated from high school in Portugal, Mr. Carvalho decided to move to the United States, arriving first in New York, where one of his first jobs was as a dishwasher in Manhattan. He arrived in the United States on a visitor visa, and he overstayed the visa, making him undocumented.
“I say it not proudly, but it is the truth from which I cannot hide,” Mr. Carvalho said of overstaying his visa. “I live it every day.”
After New York, he traveled across the country and ended up in Miami. He did not speak English, but he found work at restaurants, farms and construction sites.
“Back in the mid-’80s, it was not difficult to find a job without documents,” Mr. Carvalho said. “They worked you more hours for less pay.”
For a brief period, Mr. Carvalho was homeless in Miami. He said he slept in a U-Haul truck, parked under a bridge.
“I really fell into a state that I never thought I would find myself in,” Mr. Carvalho said. “Imagine: You’re poor. You don’t have a place to go, and you think that someone is always looking for you.”
Eventually, after about two years of being undocumented, Mr. Carvalho secured a student visa, which led to him obtaining a Social Security number and being able to work legally in the country.
“That was a milestone,” he said. “I felt like the luckiest human being ever.”
Mr. Carvalho later became a physics teacher in the same city where he was once homeless and undocumented. He continued to advance his career, eventually becoming the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, a position he held for 14 years.
In February 2022, Mr. Carvalho began serving as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Four years earlier, he had abruptly turned down an offer to lead the New York City school system.
Alvaro Huerta, a director of litigation and advocacy for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, called last week’s episode at the Los Angeles schools “ludicrous,” but said that one silver lining could be that people learn more about their rights.
“We certainly see the superintendent as an ally,” Mr. Huerta said. “The fact that he was undocumented and was able to rise to the level of the superintendent of one of the biggest school districts in the country is just an amazing immigrant story, and there’s so many like him.”
Mr. Carvalho said the experience from his early years in the United States has stayed with him all these years later.
“When you’re born poor, that state of mind never leaves you,” he said. “If you were once undocumented, that level of concern for yourself and for others never leaves you, either.”
