San Elizario Mom Went Under Cover at Her Daughters School, Now She's Been Arrested

Casey GarciaThe Sun

Garcia-Enriquez Middle School in San Elizario, located 20 miles southeast of El Paso, just had one of their parents arrested for attending class. In possibly one of the weirdest stories of the week, a Texan mom wanted to expose lax security at her daughter's school and went undercover, posing as her daughter for a day while she attended classes.

To show just how bad security is at her daughter's school, 30-year-old Casey Garcia spent an entire day at the middle school, posing as her 13-year-old daughter and documenting her experience online as administrators and most teachers failed to notice. She didn't however, manage to evade the long arm of the law.

Casey GarciaFox

Garcia has since been arrested and charged with criminal trespass and tampering with government records, KWTX reported. The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office was first alerted on June 1 to several social media posts circulating online documenting the incident. She was released on bond.

You can watch the video below that Garcia posted on Youtube. Early on in the clip, which has been viewed more than 121,000 times, Garcia alleges to have had a passing chat with the school's principal without being exposed. 

Why did she do it? She says she did it and filmed herself to make a point:

"We need better security at our schools. This is what I tried to prove," Garcia said in a follow-up video. "I didn’t do this to get views. I didn’t do this to get likes. I didn’t do this so people could be mad at me and I can never walk around El Paso again."

Once inside the school, she used her daughter’s ID student number. She says the principal greeted her in the hallway, she got a compliment on her backpack and people gave her directions. In math class, she filmed herself holding up math notes, and at lunch in the cafeteria, she held up the cheesy dish she was eating.

Though Garcia worried she was going to get caught, no one seemed to notice anything was wrong. It wasn't until the very last period of the day when a teacher asked her to stay after class. She’d finally been busted.

“She looked at me, and she’s like, ‘You’re not Julie,’” Garcia said. “I took off my mask. I took off my glasses, and I said, ‘No, I’m not Julie. I’m Julie’s mom.’”

Garcia’s unusual strategy may have embarrassed the school but it's done little in terms of proving actual security issues in the middle school. She had access to her daughter's ID, would have been wearing a mask, and there would be a strong family resemblance that would have made the deception possible.

Garcia Enriquez Middle SchoolGEMS

If anything, she's simply shown that someone who looks like someone else, has their ID, and knows their habits can infiltrate a building with moderate security.  In a video following her arrest, she made the following statement;

"There have been one too many mass shootings in schools. That is disgusting to think of that it all could have been prevented just by putting metal detectors and more security… Are you more concerned that I, a parent, was sitting next to your child or do we really want to wait for the next person taking their Second Amendment right to the extreme?"

How has the school responded? After the incident, the superintendent of the San Elizario School District put out a statement to parents acknowledging “there was a breach in security” and “our security measures are being reviewed and evaluated.”

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