Two Toronto girls used by immigration officials as bait to lure their illegal-immigrant mother did not attend school on Monday and are assumed to have joined their parents in hiding.

On Friday morning, immigration authorities went to St. Jude School, presented the principal with official documents and took two sisters, age 7 and 14, from their classrooms.

The officers then called the girls' mother, who moved here illegally from Costa Rica, and threatened to take them away if she did not turn up within half an hour.

"It is such a sad desperate situation," Principal Patti Mazelow told CTV News.

Although the sisters and their mother were later released, the act of removing children without their immigrant parents present is contradictory to federal protocol.

School boards look at legal action

On Monday, school board officials lashed out against the unusual deportation tactic.

Toronto Catholic District School Board Chair Oliver Carroll said that he is prepared to take the federal government to court to prevent this from happening again.

"If there is any legal action we can take, we will take it," Carroll told CTV.ca.

Carroll said that to pursue children in their schools for deportation matters is "way over the top."

"There was no need for the immigration people to come to schools either to take people away or to use children there to get their parents to come to the schools," he said

In particular, Carroll fears that the move will encourage absenteeism among immigrant students.

"To be removed from the school, it has a real chilling effect on the other children," Carroll said.

"You can imagine if you were an immigrant, even if you were here legally, you'd be sitting there looking at the empty seats and wondering 'What happened there and am I next?'"

A community worker told CTV Toronto that at least one family, whose children attend St. Jude elementary, have now pulled their kids from the school out of fear that they will be targeted next.

Carroll held an internal meeting to discuss future staff protocols should an incident like this occur again.

Toronto District School Board trustee Bruce Davis is working with the Catholic school board to ensure incidents like this do not occur again in schools.

"I think we should take the lead on stopping this action right now," Davis told CTV Newsnet.

"So I've asked our school board lawyers to tell us what the law is and also to give us some advice in terms of how we can intervene to stop this from happening."

MPs attack deportation tactics

A Liberal MP confronted the Conservatives about the incident in the House of Commons Monday.

During question period, the associate critic for citizenship and immigration, Andrew Telegdi, described the act of holding the girls for ransom "to trap hard working parents" as "reprehensible and extreme."

Directing his comments to Stockwell Day, Telegdi asked the minister of public safety to "instruct his officials that schools are for learning and are off limits for the purpose of immigration enforcement."

Day replied by saying that he shared the minister's concern and that a full review of the matter is in the works.

"This is not a normal process or procedure nor do we want to see it become that," Day said.

Multiple incidents at schools

The incident on Friday is not the only deportation case where immigration authorities have gone to schools in Toronto.

On Thursday, a brother and sister, age 14 and 15, were also pulled out of class by immigration agents.

The two Dante Alighieri Academy students "were forcibly removed from the school out to the sidewalk where there was a van waiting with their parent - their mother waiting to be deported," Davis said.

Carroll said that for all he knows, these students "may well be on their way back home."

Although dramatic, this was the proper protocol a spokeswoman for Canada Border Services told the Toronto Star.

In addition to apprehending the four children at school this week, Davis said that there have been incidents where immigration authorities are going to schools asking to see student records, for information about where they live, their parents' information, and parents' telephone numbers.

"That's completely unacceptable for obvious reasons," Davis said.