When one judge blocks a president’s policies nationwide, alarm bells ring. Should a single judge wield this much power? Can they halt policies across the entire country after just a quick first look at whether they might be illegal? The Supreme Court now .

A federal judge in Washington state today President Donald J. Trump’s three-day-old executive order to end birthright citizenship. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, called the order .” He agreed with the four state plaintiffs that it would cause irreparable harm to those denied their right to citizenship, subjected to the risk of deportation and family separation and deprived of federally funded medical care and public benefits that “prevent child poverty and promote child health,” also impacting their education. A separate federal lawsuit is pending in Massachusetts.

— plus San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — and several civil rights groups are suing to block President Donald J. Trump’s move to undo birthright citizenship through executive order, a constitutional challenge education leaders say could transform public schools. 

Trump, who rode a to a second term, argues that to any child whose mother is unlawfully present in the United States or lawfully present on a temporary basis — such as foreign students — and whose father is neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident. 

The move garnered immediate backlash: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868. It states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” 

“If you lose the protections of birthright citizenship and is overturned or somehow ignored, then I think a lot of families would withdraw their children from school out of fear of deportation,” said immigration advocate and policy expert Timothy Boals, referring to the 1982 Supreme Court case which forbids schools from denying enrollment based on a child’s or their parents’ immigration status. 

Conservative forces aligned with the Trump administration have been strategizing an end to Plyler . That potential threat is now being amplified with the affront on birthright citizenship and Tuesday’s announcement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are now free to , churches and other once-protected areas. The president has already pledged and a return to .

“What that means is more children are denied an education and that’s not good for our society if they end up staying,” said Boals, “and it’s certainly not good for the students wherever they end up going.”

Speaking specifically about the ICE enforcement change, Laura Gardner, who founded Immigrant Connections, a consulting group that works with educators, said the policy will create “intense fear” and could negatively impact student attendance and family engagement. It will also be difficult for teachers, whom she said can’t do their job when children aren’t in school. 

“As educators, we always remind students and families that schools are a safe space and now we can’t really guarantee that,” she told ����Ӱ��. “Ultimately, all this is going to do is hurt innocent children.”

About lived with an unauthorized immigrant parent in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to . This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007.

The president also seeks to prohibit government agencies from issuing documents recognizing an infant’s citizenship if born under the circumstances he outlined — or from accepting documents issued by state, local or other authorities acknowledging their citizenship. 

The controversial order could go into effect Feb. 19, leaving children born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents, from that date on, without any legal status. “They will all be deportable and many will be stateless,” according to . 

It said Trump has no right to rewrite or nullify a constitutional amendment, “Nor is he empowered by any other source of law to limit who receives United States citizenship at birth.”

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups fighting the move, called it a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values.

“Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is,” he said. “This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans.”

Romero’s remarks harken back to one of the Supreme Court’s most reviled rulings: . In that 1857 case, the court ruled that enslaved people, including Dred Scott, were not citizens of the United States and, as a result, could not expect any protection from the federal government or courts, according to the . 

The ruling, which pushed the nation toward civil war, was essentially undone by the 13th and 14th amendments. 

New York Attorney General Letitia James lambasted Trump for trying to reverse what has been a hallmark of the nation for more than 150 years.

“This executive order is nothing but an attempt to sow division and fear, but we are prepared to fight back with the full force of the law to uphold the integrity of our Constitution,” she said. “As Attorney General, I will always protect the legal rights of immigrants and their families and communities.”

If Trump’s order is implemented, the U.S. would join other nations that do not allow birthright citizenship — or greatly restrict such protections — including and Australia. 

As of 2022, reported that unauthorized immigrants represented 3.3% of the total U.S. population and 23% of the foreign-born population: Immigrants as a whole comprised 14.3% of the nation’s population that year, below the record high of 14.8% reached in 1890.

At an inaugural prayer service Tuesday, an Episcopal bishop made to reconsider his views on immigrants and their kids. 

“… they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors,” the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde said. “… I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away …”

The next day Trumpand described Edgar Budde as a “so-called Bishop” and a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who was not compelling or smart.

Updated Jan 22: As of Jan 21, the Department of Homeland Security has  its “sensitive locations” policy, allowing immigration raids where children gather including schools, hospitals and churches.

Parents showing their children where passports and other important legal documents are hidden at home. 

Mothers and fathers signing affidavits outlining who their childrens’ caregiver would be. 

Guardians making arrangements with schools for dismissal in the event they have been picked up by federal agents in a deportation sweep.

These are the daily conversations and heartbreaking realities mixed-status families — where not all kids, parents or grandparents hold American citizenship or legal status to reside in the U.S. — are rehearsing in case children come home to an empty house.

With Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan pledging to operate the largest deportation operation in American history in just days, parents, advocates, lawyers, and educators nationwide are working nonstop to protect and prepare families and school staff. 

“Students can’t focus on learning when they’re worried about whether their parents will come home at the end of the day, when they see themselves dehumanized in the press, or when representatives of the federal government come to their city to say, ‘You’ll be first in line for removal,’” Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said last month. The union has rolled out a “Sanctuary Training Series” for staff and parents on how to protect kids from federal raids.  

����Ӱ�� interviewed dozens of people working with some of the nearly six million families facing ongoing dehumanization and to understand how deportation plans are affecting schools and students. 

School leaders throughout the country have begun sharing : Ensuring bus drivers and front office staff are trained on legal policies; providing simple scripts for what to say when interacting with federal law enforcement; explaining what’s next if the worst happens and families .

Educators, like healthcare workers, are sharing tips on for interacting with federal agents. Immigrant coalitions and parents are leading “” trainings in schools. Some schools are increasing mental health offerings as widespread increases along with anti-immigrant hate. 

“We need to let you know, if you are a student who is undocumented or a family who is undocumented, we will take care of you,” former teacher and board member Scott Esserman vowed at a Denver school board meeting in . “That’s our responsibility.”

When pressed on what the Trump administration’s plans would mean for millions of families with young children, officials have advised deported parents to take their American citizen children . If their home countries won’t accept them, the administration has reportedly where they will be permanently displaced – places where they may have no cultural, linguistic connection to.

Immigration enforcement operations will start in , Illinois and , Colorado, just outside of Denver, Trump administration officials have said.  

In response, school districts including , , , , and have reiterated resolutions passed during Trump’s first term and are training staff on how to protect families’ privacy in any interactions with immigration enforcement. 

, the nation’s largest, has a clear cut policy: If immigration enforcement officers do arrive at a school building, staff must keep them outside, notifying the districts’ legal counsel to first verify any warrants or subpoenas.

“Protecting immigrant students in and around school is not only moral – it’s the ,” said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, co-founder of the National Newcomer Network and fellow at The Century Foundation. Accessing free education, regardless of immigration status, has been protected as a constitutional right for 42 years. 

And like hospitals, schools, afterschool programs and chldrens’ bus stops have long been considered “sensitive locations,” protected from federal immigration raids without appropriate approval. Dozens of families sought refuge in while immigration arrests spread during the last Trump administration. 

Today, advocates are preparing for a different ballgame. The Trump administration’s include scrapping the Homeland Security’s sensitive locations policy, a move legal experts expect would be challenged. 

“We don’t want people with contagious diseases too scared to go to the hospital or children going uneducated because of poorly considered deportation policies,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told . 

While the legal logistical challenges to operate mass deportations are predictable and being planned for – Texas, for instance, has pledged for deportation centers – immigration law scholar Hiroshi Motomura expects a wildcard: the public’s political will. 

“When you have the rhetoric and focus on the wall and on the border, it’s easy to stick with this idea that immigration law is to protect ‘us’ from ‘them,’” Motomura told ����Ӱ��. 

“But it really is different when you start depriving employees of their families, and kids see their classmates deported,” he said. “It completely shifts the political vulnerability and what’s going on here.”

����Ӱ�� spoke with school staff, advocates and lawyers in states with the highest volume of mixed-status families about what they expect and how they’re preparing for the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans: 

Priscilla Monico Marín

Executive Director of the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children 

Reality set in for Marín and her New Jersey-based team over the summer: Trump’s second presidency was a distinct possibility. To reach as many immigrant youth as quickly as they could, they started brainstorming, identifying a new district partner, Jersey City Public Schools.

Marín felt “called” to support families like her own when anti-immigrant rhetoric resurged, swapping her career as a bilingual teacher to become an immigration lawyer. 

“No one wants to be defined by your hardest day,” she said, adding too often undocumented students are not defined by their “humor, their curiosity, or their strength,” but instead their status and trauma.

Her team leads workshops and shares resources for classes of multilingual learners, so that they can secure immigration case support, access to social services and help others work past barriers to school enrollment.

The current situation has created a sense of urgency to what Marín and her team do. 

After she leaves the schools, older students start calling their hotline for assistance to secure visas and more stable immigration statuses, and to ask, “I’m undocumented. How do I enroll in healthcare?,” while some navigate the web of government bureaucracy as the only bilingual person in their families. 

Prerna Arora

Columbia Teachers College Faculty, New York

— a professor who studies the mental and physical health impacts of immigration on children — is witnessing a culture of fear and pain that’s limiting learning as fears of deportation loom. 

Working with 100 immigrant youth and asylum seekers throughout New York City, she has seen more hesitance and skepticism to share their emails or names in recent months than ever before. 

Many expressed feeling “underestimated… People may expect them not to have any language skills or fewer than they have.” Arora said. “…A lot of them spoke up to say, ‘we want people to know that we actually do want to try, we do care.’” 

In addition, several noted bias, hate and harassment from both children and adult K-12 school staff. “Maybe it’s a comment in passing that nobody realized how harmful it was.” Students are especially hurt when teachers say nothing at all after an  incident. 

Particularly to curb absenteeism, Arora emphasized schools need to focus on providing several tiers of mental health supports, ranging from school-wide workshops to small group and individual counseling, and establishing a sense of safety so that “parents and kids feel like the school can be trusted.” 

Miguel Bocanegra

Immigration Lawyer with Cornell University’s Path2Papers Program, California

A small team of lawyers have held over 500 free consultations since launching one year ago, quickly mobilizing to move as many working DACA recipients toward more permanent legal residency before the Supreme Court or Trump’s administration upends the program’s fate.

Their approach is “offensive as opposed to defensive … to assist people in getting visas, to move in a positive direction that would not keep them in permanent limbo,” said Bocanegra, who has been practicing immigration law for over two decades. 

Bocanegra anticipates the Supreme Court may put an end to DACA as soon as late 2025, though it . The Obama-era policy has enabled more than 700,000 “dreamers” brought to the country as children to attain temporary legal status and work authorization. 

Today, he hosts confidential consultations with teachers and on campuses and over Zoom, helping them and their employers secure sponsorship and more permanent statuses like H-1B visas.

Roughly 82% of the people they’ve worked with are eligible for more stable statuses via employment or humanitarian visas. 

“We’re advising employers to educate themselves and make decisions one way or the other about whether they can move forward with these visa options while there’s still some time.”

Alejandra Vázquez Baur

Co-founder of National Newcomer Network, New York

A former south Florida teacher who grew up in a mixed status household, Vázquez Baur has witnessed generations of kids live with fears of deportation that often led to school absenteeism. 

While the incoming administration’s agenda seems more willing to target families and threaten kids’ right to education, she urged school leaders to remember, “the law is still the law, nothing has changed yet.”

The fear school staff may experience when encountering federal law enforcement is  only mitigated by knowing what to do. Some have begun printing out and language that front office staff, bus drivers and security agents can use: “We follow district policy and cannot provide any information without consulting legal counsel.”

Maribel Sainez

Aspire Public Schools’ Director of Advocacy & Community Engagement, California

Sainez, who also grew up in a mixed-status household, is urgently spreading a resource she recently learned of: , where families can report if they’ve seen ICE agents, inquire about sightings in a given area, or get support after an interaction with the agency. 

She and her charter network that serves many undocumented students are partnering with local organizations to offer Know Your Rights trainings, which include exercises for families on how to interact with federal agents. 

“I constantly draw on my own lived experiences,” said Sainez. “… How can we counter that fear and panic and really promote a sense of solidarity, awareness, and power building?”

In Los Angeles, citizenship expert Motomura has analyzed decades of policy, and resistance to change it. He’s among thousands advocating for reforms to the immigration system, stuck in congressional limbo year after year.  

“The world has changed, the economy has changed,” Motomura said. “The only way we’re going to get out of it is to make it not about how high the border wall is, but ask ourselves why there are 11 million people in the country who are without papers.”