Drivers are harassing buses of Idaho migrant kids, council says.
At first, it was just nasty looks and rude gestures. Then angry drivers started to follow the buses full of migrant children, most younger than 5, down Canyon County roads.
“It’s really heartbreaking, because they’re children,” said Sonnay Alvarez, spokeswoman for the Community Council of Idaho. The council runs 10 Head Start centers for children of migrant workers across the state.
“They don’t understand what hate is,” she said.
The Community Council of Idaho plans to remove and conceal signage on buses they use to transport local children of farmworkers and Head Start participants, after repeated experiences of harassment from motorists across the state, including the Treasure Valley. Each bus transports eight to 12 kids from their homes to the center, and the staff estimates that dozens of migrant children and bus drivers have experienced this harassment across Idaho.
The staff said they assume the drivers are harassing the buses — labeled “Migrant and Seasonal Head Start” — because they assume that migrant means undocumented.
“Migrant doesn’t necessarily mean ‘illegal,’” Alvarez told the Statesman. “Migrant means people move in search of work, which is what our program is. We have people who might move from East Idaho to Caldwell because of the work that they’re in.”
The council provides a range of services and support to farmworkers and Latinos in rural Idaho, as well as their children. The council was founded in 1971 and is the largest nonprofit serving Latinos in Idaho.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article234038627.html#storylink=cpy
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until taught otherwise.
