Federal agents were denied entrance to two elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this week after they showed up unannounced and sought to get in touch with five students who the agents alleged had entered the country without documentation, school officials said Thursday.

According to schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho, the agents said they were there to check on the students’ well-being and lied when they told school officials that their families had given permission for the contact.

It was the first reported instance of an attempt by U.S. authorities to enter an L.A. public school amid the Trump administration’s vows to ramp up enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and more swiftly deport immigrants in the country without authorization.

About 10 a.m. Monday, four people arrived at Russell Elementary on Firestone Boulevard and identified themselves as Homeland Security agents, Carvalho said at a Thursday news conference. The agents, who interacted with the principal, asked to speak with four students, ranging from first-graders to sixth-graders. The principal denied access, Carvalho said.

Two hours later, he said, a similar incident occurred at Lillian Street Elementary, where agents attempted to contact a sixth-grader and were denied access by the principal. Both schools are in the Florence-Graham neighborhood in South Los Angeles.

“They declared to the principals in both instances that the caretakers of these students have authorized them to go to the school,” Carvalho said. “We have confirmed that that is a falsehood. We’ve spoken with the caretakers of these children, in some cases parents, and they deny any interactions, deny providing authorization for these individuals to have any contact with these children at the school.”

The people identified themselves as agents with the Homeland Security Investigations unit, an investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to district officials. Carvalho said that they were not in uniform and seemed reluctant to show official identification more than briefly when the principals tried to write down their information. He said the district has not been able to confirm that they did in fact work for Homeland Security.

“The principals did the right thing. They denied access. They asked for proof of agency,” Carvalho said. The district’s legal staff deployed to the schools, at which point the federal officials left the schools in dark vehicles.

Carvalho was visibly incensed Thursday as he described the interactions. He recounted, as he has in the past, that he arrived in the United States as an undocumented teenager from Portugal.

“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 that would require Homeland Security to deploy its agents to elementary schools,” he said. “Schools are places for learning. Schools are places for understanding. Schools are places for instruction, schools are not places of fear.”

In a statement issued to The Times on Thursday, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the visits were not related to immigration enforcement, but instead were “wellness checks” on the children targeted. McLaughlin confirmed the agents were with Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that typically conducts criminal probes into smuggling operations, drug trafficking and other major transnational crimes.

“These HSI officers were at these schools conducting wellness checks on children who arrived unaccompanied at the border,” she said in an emailed statement. “DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked.”

It was not clear from her statement whether agents had evidence that the children in question were being abused. The agents did not present school officials with court orders authorizing the visits.

Karina Ramos, a managing attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she has heard from several families this week saying HSI agents had knocked on their door in search of unaccompanied minors staying at the home.

Typically, unaccompanied minors who cross the border are processed at federal facilities and placed with relatives or sponsors in the U.S. while their pleas for asylum play out. Traditionally, the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has conducted follow-up wellness checks, generally by phone, to make sure that the children are safe and in school, she said.

“This is the investigative arm of ICE,” Ramos said of HSI agents taking on that role. “They have not been sent out to knock on doors and look for children before, not in my experience. Truly the way they’re going about it makes no sense.”

The Times shared McLaughlin’s statement with district officials, who said they stood by their response.

The Times first reported the unusual encounters Wednesday evening, and the district held a news conference Thursday to provide more details. District officials said Russell and Lillian were the only schools visited.

Russell Elementary in South Los Angeles.

(Google street view)

Carvalho said the district would continue to keep its campuses closed to federal agents who arrive without a judicial warrant.

“This was a wake-up call,” said Mario Valenzuela, the political and community actions director for United Teachers Los Angeles. “It’s just not something that should be happening in our schools, especially elementary schools.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond issued a statement later Thursday commending school employees for denying “unauthorized access to innocent children who pose no risk to our national security.”

A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson said that, after the encounters, other district schools sent out “precautionary messages” to families that referenced “reports of immigration enforcement activity.”

The state has prepared guidance to help school districts comply with state law limiting state and local participation in immigration enforcement activities. Immigration agents do not have to be granted access to a K-12 campus without a warrant.

Los Angeles Unified mandates that employees receive training about what assistance or documentation they should and should not provide to federal immigration authorities.

The L.A. Board of Education has passed a series of resolutions stating that L.A. Unified will be a sanctuary for immigrants.