A soccer ball covered in signatures from classmates. A handwritten letter telling a child of their worth. A T-shirt bearing a school emblem meant to remind a newcomer how much they were loved in a place they once called home. 

These are among the items teachers have given their multilingual learners after hearing their families planned to leave rather than risk being detained by immigration agents.

“One of my students told me last week that their family had decided to go back to Brazil because they were afraid of deportation,” said teacher Joanna Schwartz. “It was his last day here. I scrounged up a T-shirt with our school’s logo on it and a permanent marker and my student had all of his friends and teachers sign it.”

She said she taught the fifth grader for three years. 

“It’s nothing big, but it was a treasure to him to have the physical signatures of his dearest friends and teachers to take with him,” she said. 

Some immigrant students wrestling with the fear of deportation leave school with no warning. They simply stop showing up and ignore the calls and emails that follow. 

Other times, they give their teachers just a few hour’s notice, often a single afternoon, to process and accept the loss of a relationship that might have lasted for years. A tight hug, a kind word and then … gone.  

Such scenes are unfolding throughout the country as the Trump administration and , striking terror in the hearts of the undocumented and their advocates. 

Faced with the fallout, teachers who’ve spent their entire careers advocating for immigrant students — fighting battles even within their own districts to ensure they have a robust education — are left fumbling for the right words to say or gift to give a child under extreme stress. 

Schwartz, who teaches multilingual learners in Philadelphia, uses her prior training as a therapist to help kids through these toughest of moments. 

She said she often gives these children “transitional objects,” something tangible, like the signed school T-shirt, to help them feel connected to their friends in the United States as they move back to their homelands.

Schwartz wrote her departing student a letter in which she “reminded him of his many strengths and told him how much he will be missed,” she said. She added drawings, stickers and her email address. 

“I wish I could do more,” she said. 

Areli Rodriguez was devastated when, last winter, during her first year of teaching in Texas, one of her most promising and devoted young students left for another state: The boy’s family was growing wary of and headed to Oklahoma, where they hoped they’d be safer. 

“He was my first student who left for this reason,” she said of the fifth grader who had arrived in the United States from Mexico less than a year earlier. “It was so gutting. It just broke my heart.” 

The family didn’t know the Sooner State would impose some of the harshest in the nation. Those included state schools chief Ryan Walters saying he would comply with Trump’s order allowing immigration enforcement in schools and a failed edict that Oklahoma parents be required to report their own immigration status when enrolling their kids in school. That proposal was rejected by the governor this week, who said children should not be used

Rodriguez is not sure where the child is today. As a parting gift, she gave him a soccer ball signed by all his classmates.

Video: A fifth-grade student leaving Areli Rodriguez’s Texas classroom leads his classmates in a chant in Spanish about self-worth. ����Ӱ�� obscured the students’ faces to protect their identity and provided the English-translation captions. (Areli Rodriguez)

The boy, who was chosen as student of the week when he departed, led the class in a call-and-response chant by Rita F. Pierson just moments before he was gone from the district for good.  

I am somebody.

I was somebody when I came.

I’ll be a better somebody when I leave.

I am powerful, and I am strong.

… I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go.

And, his teacher noted, she wasn’t the only gift-giver that day: The boy left her one of his favorite toys, a Rubik’s Cube. 

In a diary entry, he wrote to Rodriguez and another beloved teacher: “To say goodbye to all of you, Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. [S], I want to tell you that you are my favorite teachers, and I’m sorry for any trouble I may have caused. Maybe I wasn’t the best student, but I am proud of myself for learning so much.”

Rodriguez didn’t need the note to remember him.

“I think about him all the time,” she said, adding that he embodies what she loves most about multilingual learners. “For him, school was a gift, an opportunity, a privilege. He just worked so hard. We had academic competitions. I coached him. He did creative writing in Spanish and he placed. His parents were so supportive — they looked at education as something they wanted to seize.”

His classmates felt the loss, too, Rodriguez said. 

“There would be times when I would sit there at recess and watch them play without him and you could tell there was an element missing,” she said. 

The Department of Homeland Security is urging undocumented people to This isn’t the first time they’ve felt such pressure: Former President in a single term, double that of Trump’s first four years in office. But many of those he turned away were newly arrived at the border. Unlike Trump, Biden shied away from . 

The current president is targeting this population in other ways, too. Trump signed an executive order Feb. 19 aimed at . It’s unclear how this might impact education: Schools receive federal money, particularly to help support low-income children, but they also cannot turn away students based on their immigration status, according to the 1982 Supreme Court decision . 

That landmark ruling, however, , most recently in Tennessee where lawmakers this month introduced a bill saying schools can deny enrollment to undocumented students. The sponsors say it’s their intention to challenge Plyler.

‘We hugged long and hard’

In addition to the T-shirts, cards and other mementos, educators are preparing something else for withdrawing students, a far more practical gift meant to help them resume their education elsewhere — and quickly. 

Genoveva Winkler, regional migrant education program coordinator housed in Idaho’s Nampa School District, said she’s given more than 100 families copies of their students’ transcripts in English and Spanish. 

“This school year, we are preparing ‘packets’ for the families with all that information,” Winkler wrote in a Facebook message, adding her district also gave them textbooks supplied by the Mexican Consulate that parents can use to prepare their children academically and bolster their Spanish. “The students are not 100% bilingual. Parents are taking all steps necessary to make the transition easier for their children.”

Indianapolis teacher Amy Halsall said four children from the same family, ranging in age from 7 to 12, left her school system right after Inauguration Day, headed back to Mexico. 

“They didn’t specifically say that it was immigration related but I would guess it was,” Halsall said. “This is a family that we have had in our school since their sixth grader was in first grade. The kids were really upset that they had to leave.”

The youngest and the eldest told Halsall they want to be ESL teachers when they grow up, she said. The two middle children hope to be mechanics and one day open their own shop. Halsall gave them a notebook full of letters written by fellow students and pictures of their classmates.

“I told the kids that they had learned a lot and always did their best,” she said. “I told them that they worked hard and were on their way to being bilingual. We hugged long and hard. I told them if they ever came back to Indianapolis that they should call us or visit.

I told them if I was ever in Mexico, I would call them. I tried hard to keep things positive but it was hard for all of us. Everyone had tears in their eyes.”

The anxiety continues, Halsall said. Just last week, another child, age 8, told her he worried that “La Migra” — ICE agents — would take his mother away while he was out. 

“I told him that he was safe at school and if he got home and no one was there to call me,” she said. 

Another teacher, in Virginia, said she had two such students leave school so far this academic year. One hailed from Guatemala and the other from Mexico. Both were in their mid-teens and had impeccable attendance, she said.

The boy from Guatemala, a solid student who wanted to accelerate his path toward graduation, would often say how perplexing it was that some of his peers didn’t show the same dedication to their studies that he did. 

Both teens expressed concern to fellow students about possible immigration raids shortly before leaving school for good. Their teacher did not have a chance to say goodbye in either case. Their departure, she said, left her feeling “completely empty.”

“I’ve loved watching them integrate in our school and seeing how they realized they can have this pathway if they choose,” she said. “Watching that choice ripped away by fear is devastating.”

Mary Koslap-Petraco, a pediatric nurse practitioner who exclusively treats underserved children, said when she heard the news Thursday morning she was immediately filled with “absolute dread.”

“I have been following him for years,” she told ����Ӱ��. “I’ve read what he has written. I’ve heard what he has said. I know he has made a fortune with his anti-vax stance.”

She is primarily concerned that his rhetoric might “scare the daylights out of people so that they don’t want to vaccinate their children.” She also fears he could move to defund a program under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that provides vaccines to kids who lack health insurance or otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them. While the program is federally mandated by Congress, moves to drain its funding could essentially render it useless.

Koslap-Petraco’s practice in Massapequa Park, New York relies heavily on the program to vaccinate pediatric patients, she said. If it were to disappear, she asked, “How am I supposed to take care of poor children? Are they supposed to just die or get sick because their parents don’t have the funds to get the vaccines for them?” 

And, if the government-run program were to stop paying for vaccines, she said she’s terrified private insurance companies might follow suit. 

Vaccines for Children is “the backbone of pediatric vaccine infrastructure in the country,” said Richard Hughes IV, former vice president of public policy at Moderna and a George Washington University law professor who teaches a course on vaccine law.

Kennedy will also have immense power over Medicaid, which covers low-income populations and provides billions of dollars to schools annually for physical, mental and behavioral health services for eligible students.

If Kennedy moves to weaken programs at HHS, which experts expect him to do, through across-the-board cuts in public health funding that trickle down to immunization programs or more targeted attacks, low-income and minority school-aged kids will be disproportionately impacted, Hughes said. 

“I just absolutely, fundamentally, confidently believe that we will see deaths,” he added.

Anticipating chaos and instability

Following a contentious seven hours of grilling across two confirmation hearings, Democratic senators Kennedy’s confirmation on the floor late into the night Wednesday. The following morning, all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted in opposition and all but one Republican — childhood polio survivor Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — lined up behind President Donald Trump’s pick.

James Hodge, a public health law expert at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said that while it was good to see senators across the political spectrum asking tough questions and Kennedy offering up some concessions on vaccine-related policies and initiatives, he’s skeptical these will stick.

“Whatever you’ve seen him do for the last 25 to 30 years is a much, much greater predictor than what you saw him do during two or three days of Senate confirmation proceedings,” Hodge said. “Ergo, be concerned significantly about the future of vaccines, vaccine exemptions, [and] how we’re going to fund these things.”

Hodge also said he doesn’t trust how Kennedy will respond to the consequences of a dropoff in childhood vaccines, pointing to the current in West Texas schools.

“The simple reality is he may plant misinformation or mis-messaging,” he said.

During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy tried to distance himself from his past anti-vaccination sentiments stating, “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety … I believe that vaccines played a critical role in health care. All of my kids are vaccinated.”

He was confirmed as Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education, was sitting down for her first day of hearings. At one point that morning, McMahon signaled to possibly shifting enforcement to HHS of the — a federal law dating back to 1975 that mandates a free, appropriate public education for the with disabilities — if Trump were to succeed in shutting down the education department.

This would effectively put IDEA’s under Kennedy’s purview, further linking the education and public health care systems.

In a post on the social media site BlueSky, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, she is “concerned that anyone is willing to move IDEA services for kids with disabilities into HHS, under a secretary who questions science.”

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union and a parent of a child with ADHD and autism, told ����Ӱ�� the idea was “absolutely absurd” and would cause chaos and instability. 

Kennedy’s history of falsely asserting a link between childhood vaccines and autism — a disability included under IDEA coverage — is particularly concerning to experts in this light.

“You obviously have a contingent of kids who are beneficiaries of IDEA that are navigating autism spectrum disorder,” said Hughes, “Could [we] potentially see some sort of policy activity and rhetoric around that? Potentially.”

Vaccines — and therefore HHS — are inextricably linked to schools. Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. But Kennedy, who now has control of an agency with a $1.7 trillion budget and 90,000 employees spread across 13 agencies, could pull multiple levers to roll back requirements, enforcements and funding, according to ����Ӱ��’s previous reporting. And Trump has signaled an interest in that mandate vaccines.

“There’s a certain percentage of the population that is focused on removing school entry requirements,” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine SAFE Communities Coalition. “They are loud, and they are organized and they are well funded by groups just like RFK Jr.’s .”

Kennedy will also have the ability to influence the makeup of the committees that approve vaccines and add them to the federal vaccine schedule, which state legislators rely on to determine their school policies. Hodge said one of these committees is already being “re-organized and re-thought as we speak.”

“With him now in place, just expect that committee to start really changing its members, its tone, the demeanor, the forcefulness of which it’s suggesting vaccines,” he added.

Hughes, the law professor, said he is preparing for mass staffing changes throughout the agency, mirroring what’s already happened across in Trump’s first weeks in office. He predicts this will include Kennedy possibly asking for the resignations “of all scientific leaders with HHS.” 

Kennedy appeared to confirm that he was eyeing staffing cuts Thursday night during on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

“I have a list in my head … if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said.