Enrollment in California K-12 schools, and in schools across the country, is declining rapidly as birth rates drop and immigration rates fall. This school year, California had the largest decline in enrollment rates since 2021-22, after schools returned from the pandemic.

Enrollment in public schools declined by 1.3%, or by 74,961 students, according to data released Thursday by the California Department of Education. State public school enrollment is now at 5.7 million students.

The biggest declines were in private schools, with a 6.6% drop in enrollment, and home schools, with a 3.7% decline, according to state officials. Traditional public school enrollment dropped 1.4% and charter public school enrollment fell by 0.3%.

State officials attribute the enrollment dip to an ongoing decline in birth rates and immigration losses.

The California Department of Finance, which makes demographic projections for the state, estimated last October that enrollment would decline by only 10,000 students, or about 0.2%.

Districts are shoring up enrollment losses with cuts

California funds schools based on average daily attendance. The new enrollment figures may not surprise district leaders, who have the staff to track births, housing projections and other factors, but smaller districts may have to redo attendance-based revenue projections for the coming years, said Kenneth Kapphahn, principal fiscal analyst for the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. 

The impact on schools is real and immediate, said Kindra Britt, communications director for California County Superintendents. 

“That translates directly into budget deficits, staff layoffs, program cuts, and in some cases, school closures,” Britt said.

The continuing trend of declining enrollment is a new reality the state must adapt to, said Troy Flint, chief information officer for the California School Boards Association. Even when enrollment declines, costs to operate the school remain the same, he said. 

The decline in enrollment statewide will not affect overall TK-12 state funding, which will continue to be about 40% of the state’s general fund, and is projected to rise significantly in 2025-26.

Declining enrollment is a national problem

Nationwide K-12 school enrollment has declined by 2.3% or 1.18 million students over the past five years, according to the . National projections predict that the country will lose another 2.7 million students by 2031.

All 39 states that released enrollment data for this school year have experienced a decline, said Elizabeth Sanders, director of communications and public relations for the CDE. About half of the states had larger enrollment losses than California.

Half the enrollment loss in the state is in L.A. County

Los Angeles County lost 32,953 students, more than half from the Los Angeles Unified School District. The 2.6% decline in county enrollment accounted for 43% of the state’s loss.  

The number of LAUSD has dropped over the past two years after reaching a peak of 5% of the student population in 2023-24. Newcomer students are generally defined as students with limited English proficiency who have attended a U.S. school for three years or less.

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is on administrative leave, has blamed the decline on “a climate of fear and instability created by the ongoing immigration crackdowns,” according to the  

Declining enrollment was one of the main reasons for the budget deficits that led Los Angeles Unified to issue 3,200 layoff notices in February, according to district officials. The layoffs are expected to actually result in 650 job losses.

The number of Hispanic students has dropped

Hispanic students, who make up 56% of California’s student population, had the biggest loss in student enrollment, but not the largest percentage. The number of Hispanic students dropped by 48,064 or 1.48%, while the number of white students dropped by 31,076, or 2.68%.

The number of English learners also dropped by 8.2%, although the decline could be attributed, in part, to students being reclassified as proficient in English.

“We surmise that a portion of the enrollment loss is driven by current immigration enforcement activities; how long and to what extent that will continue is the crux of that question,” said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance.

Immigrant families have been afraid to send their students to school, said Martha Hernandez, executive director of  a coalition of 40 organizations focused on the educational success of English learners.

School staff have tried to assure families that it is safe for their children to go to school, but some families have opted to self-deport or simply leave the state or region for a safer place, she said. 

Immigration losses are likely to have continued to have an impact on school enrollment. Immigration to the state declined from 312,761 to 109,278 between 2024 and 2025, according to the .

Charter school skews Sacramento numbers

Sacramento County had a 9,744 drop in enrollment in its schools overall, a decline of 3.8%; while Orange County had 7,518, Santa Clara 4,198, San Diego 4,190, San Bernardino 2,543 and Ventura County 2,345 fewer students than last year.

Despite Sacramento’s ranking as the county with the second-largest loss in enrollment, two of its districts were listed as having some of the highest enrollment gains. Elk Grove Unified grew by 1,097 students, or 1.7% — making it the district with the largest enrollment gain in the state. Folsom Cordova Unified gained 537 students, an increase of 2.5%. 

The disparity in Sacramento County seems to be the result of a large enrollment dip in Twin Rivers Unified, which lost 12,300 students the same year  and Technical Schools laid off teachers and staff following a state audit that found it did not have enough teachers with the proper credentials.  

Regions with lower costs grew

The counties with the largest gains in enrollment this year are in Northern California and the Central Valley.

“There are counties and regions in California where there’s actually a sharp increase in school enrollment, and we’re seeing a direct correlation there between economies that are livable for families and where students are enrolling in school,” Sanders said. “And then of the students who remain, those families are moving to areas that are more affordable for them to live.”

The seven counties with the largest increases in enrollment are San Joaquin County, 842; Placer County, 841; Sutter County, 802; Butte County, 200; San Benito County, 146; Glenn County, 82; and Yuba County, 58.

More kids are attending transitional kindergarten

The drop in enrollment was offset somewhat by a 20.1% increase in students attending transitional kindergarten, after the state fully implemented enrollment for all 4-year-old students this school year. An additional 36,000 children were enrolled in transitional kindergarten this year, bringing the total to 213,313.

There was a 16% increase in the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged families that enrolled their children in the state’s transitional kindergarten program. There were also almost 20% more students with disabilities and almost 11% more homeless students in transitional kindergarten this year than last year.

There were fewer English learners listed in transitional kindergarten as a result of , which exempted transitional kindergarten students from taking the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC).

EdSource reporter Betty MĂĄrquez Rosales contributed to this report.

As immigration authorities carry out what President Donald Trump has promised will be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, several states are passing laws to keep children out of foster care when their detained parents have no family or friends available to take temporary custody of them.

The federal government doesn’t track how many children have entered foster care because of immigration enforcement actions, leaving it unclear how often it happens. In Oregon, as of February two children had been placed in foster care after being separated from their parents in immigration detention cases, according to Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services.

“Before fall 2025, this simply had never happened before,” Sunderland said.

As of mid-February, nearly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The record 73,000 people in detention in January represented an compared with one year before. According to , parents of 11,000 children who are U.S. citizens were detained from the beginning of Trump’s term through August.

The news outlet NOTUS that at least 32 children of detained or deported parents had been placed in foster care in seven states.

Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization, said he thinks the actual number is much higher.

“That, to us, seems really, really low,” he said.

Separation from a parent is deeply traumatic for children and can lead to , including post-traumatic stress disorder. Prolonged, intense stress can lead to more-frequent infections in children and developmental issues. That “toxic stress” is also associated with damage to areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory, , a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

, and amended existing laws during Trump’s first term to allow guardians to be granted temporary parental rights for immigration enforcement reasons. Now the enforcement surge that began after Trump returned to office last year has prompted a new wave of state responses.

In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering to amend a state law that allows parents to nominate standby, or temporary, guardians in the cases of death, incapacity, or debilitation. The bill would add separation due to federal immigration enforcement as another allowable reason.

Nevada and California passed laws last year to protect families separated by immigration enforcement actions. California’s law, called the , allows parents to nominate guardians and share custodial rights, instead of having them suspended, while they’re detained. They regain their full parental rights if they are released and are able to reunite with their children.

There are significant legal barriers to reunification once a child is placed in state custody, said Juan Guzman, director of children’s court and guardianship at the Alliance for Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization in Los Angeles.

If a parent’s child is placed in foster care and the parent cannot participate in required court proceedings because they are in detention or have been deported, it’s less likely they will be able to reunite with their child, Guzman said.

are U.S. citizens who live with a parent or family member who does not have legal immigration status, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Within that group, 2.6 million children have two parents lacking legal status.

Santana said he expects the number of family separation cases to grow as the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement campaign, putting more children at risk of being placed in foster care.

the agency to make efforts to facilitate detained parents’ participation in family court, child welfare, or guardianship proceedings, but Santana said it’s uncertain whether ICE is complying with those rules.

ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

Before the change in California’s law, the only way a parent could share custodial rights with another guardian was if the parent was terminally ill, Guzman said.

If parents create a preparedness plan and identify an individual to assume guardianship of their children, the state child welfare agency can begin the process of placing the children with that individual without opening a formal foster care case, he added.

While Nevada lawmakers expanded an existing guardianship law last year to include immigration enforcement, the measure requires the parents to file notarized paperwork with the secretary of state’s office, an administrative step that may be burdensome, said Cristian Gonzalez-Perez, an attorney at Make the Road Nevada, a nonprofit that provides resources to immigrant communities.

Gonzalez-Perez said some immigrants are still hesitant to fill out government forms, out of fear that ICE might access their information and target them. He reassures community members that the state forms are secure and can be accessed only by hospitals and courts.

The Trump administration has taken through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the IRS, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other entities.

Gonzalez-Perez and Guzman said that not enough immigrant parents know their rights. Nominating a temporary guardian and creating a plan for their families is one way they can prevent feelings of helplessness, Gonzalez-Perez said.

“Folks don’t want to talk about it, right?” Guzman said. “The parent having to speak to a child about the possibility of separation, it’s scary. It’s not something anybody wants to do.”

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More recently, though, the preschool decided to establish protocols for another kind of emergency: the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the area. 

Ever since the start of the second Trump administration, when immigration enforcement activity across the country intensified, staff and families have experienced extreme stress and anxiety about the possibility of masked agents apprehending children at their own schools, said Leah Cates, executive director of Second Street Youth Center. (Previously, education settings like Second Street would’ve been protected from immigration raids under the so-called sensitive locations policy, but the administration that designation in January 2025.)  

Cates is glad she put that new lockdown protocol in place, she said, because they’ve had to activate it twice already. 

One of those times, a teacher heard a young boy at the school yell, “Pistola! Pistola!” — Spanish for “gun” — after he saw, through a window, an ICE agent with his weapon drawn, trying to detain someone on the street right outside the school.

“We had to pull our children off the playground, bring them in and immediately go into lockdown,” Cates said. 

Some children go on walks in the community with teachers throughout the day, she added. During lockdowns, the staff use radios to communicate about the presence of ICE and determine whether groups on walks should return to the school or go to a nearby church or the fire department to seek immediate shelter. 

Their fears are not unfounded. So far, five of the 210 children enrolled in the state-funded preschool, which serves ages 3 to 5, have experienced a parent or primary caregiver detained by ICE, said Cates, who is keeping track of the impact on her school community. Many other students have relatives who have been detained, deported or otherwise apprehended by the federal agents. More than 80% of the students are from immigrant families, she added, and most are from South and Central American countries. 

Second Street offers just one example of the terror echoing through homes and early childhood programs across the country, in red and blue states, in rural and urban communities, and in documented and undocumented families. 

Researchers at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a national, anti-poverty nonprofit, have been examining the impact this administration’s immigration agenda is having on young children and their caregivers.

Between June and December 2025, CLASP staff held focus groups with 56 “at-risk” immigrant parents and primary caregivers of 74 children ages 6 and under. They also interviewed nearly 70 individuals who provide services to these families â€” many of them as early care and education providers, but also some home visitors, health care workers and others. Their findings, which anonymize the participants, are detailed in a pair of reports — centered on the experiences of young children and their immigrant families, and focused on early care and education providers in their communities.

The interviews were conducted in seven states: Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Washington. In those states, immigrant families with young children range from 13% of the population in Michigan to 41% in New Jersey, according to from the Urban Institute, which combines from 2022 and 2023. Nationally, about 24% of children ages 5 and under have at least one immigrant parent. 

What emerged from the research is a clear picture of communities that are experiencing toxic stress and trauma, said Kaelin Rapport, policy analyst at CLASP and an author of both reports. 

“People are really scared, and they’re struggling immensely,” Rapport said. “Care providers are not feeling secure. Parents are struggling to feel safe themselves. Children are internalizing these stressors and these pressures.”

The concern that many immigrant adults feel, Rapport added, is preventing some of them from leaving their homes, whether it’s to go to the grocery store or to work. 

“It’s confining the entire family inside this emotional pressure cooker,” Rapport said.

Many parents attempt to shield their young children by avoiding conversations about immigration enforcement, yet their fears and anxieties still permeate the household.

“It was very clear that children are feeling the trickle-down effects of stress,” said Suma Setty, senior policy analyst for immigration and immigrant families at CLASP and an author of the two reports. 

During an interview, the director of a child care center near Dallas shared with Setty that, before 2025, children in the program used to be so curious about visitors who came to the center. Now, when they see new faces, they hide behind the teachers’ legs. “That’s been a marked change she has observed,” Setty said. 

Cates, who was interviewed for the CLASP reports and shared details about the experiences of her preschool community with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, has seen the way information about immigration enforcement reaches children at Second Street — and how they respond. 

It’s a regular practice at the preschool for staff to ask children how they’re feeling each day, she shared. One day, a little girl said she was scared. Her teacher told her she is safe at Second Street. But the girl said, “No, ICE can get me,” then started to cry, Cates recalled. 

“The child knows,” she said. “They may not understand everything, but they know someone was taken in their families. They see the upset of parents, the upset of family members.”

Then, she added, they take what they learned and tell their friends. Cates and other staff have overheard children talking about ICE on the playground, she said. 

“We think we’re doing a great job of shielding children, but little children have big ears. They put their listening ears on, and they hear everything,” she said. “We’re not doing as good a job as we think. Those 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds are hearing, and being affected by, the trauma.”

In interviews for the CLASP report, Rapport said, several families and early care and education providers described children as “clingy” now. Some children who had been sleeping independently through the night are now insisting on sleeping in bed with their parents. Others, he heard, are less friendly, more emotionally reactive, more frightened of strangers and less adaptable to changes in routine. 

As for the caregiving staff he interviewed, Rapport said a word that comes to mind to describe their predicament is “desperation.” They are stressed and traumatized from the past 15 months too. They’re also depressed, burned out and dealing with compassion fatigue. 

“People who work in child care and early education do it because they love children and want children to succeed in life. They want children to have a healthy upbringing,” Rapport said. “They pour so much of themselves into that work. They’re pouring from that well, and sometimes that well runs dry 
 for themselves and their families.”

Most early care and education providers are underpaid, working in under-resourced programs, and in some cases are immigrants themselves or have immigrant family members to think of, the researchers said. Yet, as they write in the report focused on providers, “ECE service providers are being asked to do more than the work that they trained for; they are asked to be immigration law experts, administrative law experts, second parents, and even work for free.”

That certainly rings true at Second Street Youth Center. 

In addition to the new lockdown protocols, the preschool has made changes to other procedures. 

The program has implemented “very stringent rules” around access into the building. “If we don’t recognize who you are, we aren’t letting you into the first doorway,” Cates said. The maintenance staff, as part of their duties, now regularly walk a two-block radius around the building to scan for ICE activity. Families know to text school staff about any ICE activity they’ve seen or heard about in the area, and staff then distribute the message to all families so they can make alternative pick-up arrangements for their children. 

On top of that, Second Street has held events to educate parents about their rights. The school partnered with an immigration attorney who volunteered to help families make a plan for their children in the event something happens to them. 

The work is taking a toll on staff, she said, noting that staff are increasingly asking for a day off here and there because “it’s just all too much.” 

“But my staff 
 understand the No. 1 concern is the health, safety and well-being of children,” Cates emphasized. “Before we do anything else, our job is to keep children safe.”

We’ve suffered through the creep of a dynamic known as “,” where conspiracy theories, falsehoods and wildly distorted views of reality become easier for some Americans to embrace than the demonstrable facts of our present moment. 

Recently, a House subcommittee hearing offered a new flavor of the problem, as Republicans and their conservative witnesses tried to win political turf by substituting facts about one group of students — English learners — with beliefs about children in undocumented families, a very different group of students. 

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government’s March 11 hearing was titled, “.” That struck down a Texas law that would have blocked districts from using state education funding to teach undocumented children. In a 5-4 decision, the court held that children are covered by the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and could not be denied a public education based on their families’ legal status. 

Writing for the majority, , “The Equal Protection Clause was intended to work nothing less than the abolition of all caste-based and invidious class-based legislation. That objective is fundamentally at odds with the power (Texas) asserts here to classify persons subject to its laws as nonetheless excepted from its protection.”

The congressional hearing was a culmination of years of work by organizations like , who seek to overturn that decision. After nearly 44 years, they’re getting closer. This spring, Republicans in the Tennessee legislature passed a to erode the Plyler ruling. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives adopted a bill that would require schools to gather data on students’ citizenship and immigration status, while the state Senate approved a measure that would allow public school districts to to students who lack legal documentation. , as time is running out in the state’s legislative calendar, and lawmakers are jockeying over how to reconcile the two bills. 

This was Tennessee’s second push to restrict immigrant children’s access to public schools — it’s unlikely that it will be its last. Other states, like and , have made similar efforts. It seems inevitable that conservative state legislators will eventually succeed in enacting a bill along these lines, which will then face a legal challenge from advocates for immigrant families, civil liberties, and/or children’s data privacy. Ultimately, this may open the door for the court’s current conservative 6-3 majority to erode or remove Plyler’s civil rights protections. 

Why would anyone want to keep kids out of school? What could possibly be gained by punishing children for their families’ decisions to migrate? 

In the congressional hearing, conservatives’ main answer to these questions was financial. Republican Subcommittee chair Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and his fellow conservatives claimed that undocumented children represent a large drain on public education budgets. Critically, the evidence they provided for this relied heavily on confusing undocumented immigrant children with all immigrant children and/or with English learners. 

As a prelude to his questions, Roy claimed, the national debt is “now cracking $39 trillion, and I would note that there are a lot of reasons why, and this is one of them 
 we continue to have this fanciful notion that we can just say, ‘Anybody can come into the United States and it doesn’t have an impact on our overall budget.'”

that Texas schools enroll roughly without legal documentation, adding, “for every English learner, Texas schools receive $616 or $950 for those enrolled in a dual language program.” He then asked the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Mandy Drogin, one of the witnesses called by Roy and his Republican colleagues, “How much does that cost?” Drogin estimated that this cost Texas around $830 million per year.Ìę

, this is wildly irresponsible data use. That $830 million isn’t being spent on the estimated 100,000 undocumented children in Texas. It’s being spent on the state’s . 

Meanwhile, those 100,000 undocumented children are a diverse group, with some who are likely currently classified as English learners, others who have already become proficient in English and have moved out of that group and some who spoke English well enough upon their arrival in U.S. schools that they were never classified as English learners in the first place.

Data on English learners that are . In other words, conflating spending on English learners with spending on undocumented children is a bit like claiming that a public library is wasting money on foreigners just because international tourists sometimes come in to use the public WiFi network. 

What’s more, because the overwhelming majority of English learners are U.S. citizens, if Plyler were reversed and undocumented children were blocked from school, major budget savings. Texas schools would still enroll well over a million English learners with citizenship and/or legal residency documentation. The state would still — hopefully — want to maintain these U.S.-born students’ linguistic and academic success.

That last bit is key. Texas schools are with linguistically diverse kids — regardless of their citizenship status or their families’ immigration statuses. In the Lone Star State — and the  â€” data show these do well. That academic success produces better prepared graduates who go on to contribute more to the economy than they would have if blocked from school — earning more, paying more taxes and spending more in their local communities.

 This is why of immigration nearly always find that newcomer families — — grow the economy and than they cost to public service programs.

These recent assaults on kids’ access to public schools exacerbate a concerning conservative trend — policy research organization KFF studied during the 2024 election and found widespread public confusion. Their researchers polled the public and found that Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to agree with false, negative claims about immigrants. 

When presented with the false statement that “Immigrants are causing an increase in violent crime in the U.S.,” fully 45% of Republicans responded that this was definitely true and 36% said it was probably true. By contrast, 39% of Democrats believed that the statement was definitely false — and another 39% believed that it was probably true. 

Look: Research is not ambiguous on this question — immigrants are to commit violent than U.S.-born adults. As a National Policing Institute summary of the evidence , “political scapegoating and hyperbole are no substitute for scientific evidence.” 

For leaders serious about improving schools for all kids, that’s obviously true. But the subcommittee’s attacks on Plyler show that a perverse inversion of that line may also be true: When it comes to ambitious demagogues, evidence is no match for the allure of xenophobic, hyperbolic scapegoating. 

The views expressed here are Conor P. Williams’s alone, and do not reflect those of his employer or any other affiliated organizations. 

Two recent stories by reporters here at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ demonstrate the ongoing ripple effects of the Trump administration’s massive deportation campaign. One deals with money, the other with home. 

My colleague Linda Jacobson detailed how empty desks are adding up, whether it’s students who are absent from school, families who have been detained or others who’ve left their districts — or fled the country — on their own.

States fund districts based on per-pupil enrollment, and in California, that dollar figure comes from daily average attendance. In Minnesota, where immigration enforcement actionsÌę, the state requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. Unless an emergency exemption to the rule is granted, one district outside Minneapolis is facing a $1 million hit to its $51 million budget.

“I remember walking in the hallways going, ‘Holy God, where are all the kids?’ ” an employee in another Minnesota district told Linda. “It was eerie.”

Meanwhile, Jo Napolitano looked at what happens when the parents go missing, specifically after being detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jo reports that for their children, thousands of whom are U.S. citizens, this abrupt upheaval often means removal from home andÌęschool.

Some can find themselves, brand-new passports in hand, being sent to their parents’ birth country, which may be totally unfamiliar, or to live with family or friends —Ìęunless those adults’ citizenship status is also precarious and they may be too afraid to take them in. An unlucky number are placed in foster care and some are just left alone.

“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” one advocate said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”
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Emotional Support

Finn, a border collie/Australian shepherd mix, contemplates his California existence — or perhaps just whether it’s time for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Phyllis Jordan to feed him dinner.

Dylan Lopez Contreras sat waiting for a copy of his class schedule in a sunny fourth-floor room of his Bronx high school as his counselor walked in wearing a “Free Dylan” button attached to the strap of his messenger bag.

Dylan stood, and Hedin Bernard lifted Dylan’s more-than-6-foot frame off the floor in a tight bear hug.

It had been more than 10 months since Dylan set foot in ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a high school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students. The last time the two had seen each other, Dylan’s hair was dyed purple and just covered his ears. Now, it fell below the 21-year-old’s shoulders and the purple dye had faded to yellow.

Last May, in a Manhattan courthouse after his asylum hearing, making him the first known New York City public school student detained during President Donald Trump’s second term. The Venezuelan native became the public face of an , remaining in custody until .

After Dylan’s arrest, his mom Raiza’s . Ever since then, Bernard has, along with ELLIS founding Principal Norma Vega, led the school’s efforts to rally behind Dylan, which included helping to put Raiza in touch with lawyers and advocates, organizing a student letter-writing campaign, and supporting a fundraiser for the family. With Dylan’s return to ELLIS, they hope he can focus on “what will happen, not what did happen,” Vega said.

But the jubilation of Dylan’s return has been mixed with frequent reminders of the looming threat of immigration enforcement facing him and other ELLIS students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, released Dylan while he awaits a decision on an appeal in his . An immigration judge , and the appeals process could take years, according to his lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group. But ICE has the ability to take him back into custody at any time and requires regular check-ins, his lawyers said.

Shortly after Bernard reunited with Dylan Tuesday morning, as Dylan scarfed down a donut and drank coffee poured from Bernard’s thermos, the counselor invited him to join a college trip that week.

ELLIS staffers believe that is the surest path out of poverty. The trip would visit three colleges in upstate New York.

Dylan glanced down at his leg, where a black ankle monitor had been attached as a condition of his release. With his travel restrictions, Dylan knew he likely couldn’t attend.

But that didn’t slow down the ELLIS staffers for long. Later that morning, Bernard asked a colleague to invite college representatives to ELLIS, so Dylan wouldn’t have to leave school to meet them.

Dylan’s detention still lingers

The swiftness of the changes over the past two weeks has been hard for Dylan to comprehend.

After months in Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a Western Pennsylvania detention facility, Dylan had , flanked by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, thanking his supporters in Spanish from under the blue brim of a New York Knicks hat.

He had been sleeping on a thin cot in a cell with more than 70 men. Now he was in his own bed, cuddled with his younger siblings, ages 8 and 10, who had asked to sleep next to him. And after losing about 30 pounds in detention because he often couldn’t stomach the food, Dylan had a phalanx of adults at ELLIS showering him with .

“It’s a big contrast, to go through so much mistreatment, and then come back to people who love and support you,” he said in Spanish.

Still, his thoughts drift back to a friend in detention nicknamed “El Mayor,” or the elder, who has already called Dylan to let him know how happy he was to hear about his release and to ask if he could use his public profile to advocate for the release of others. (Dylan did exactly that at his press conference.) As long as those men remain in detention, Moshannon Valley is “not going to feel very far away,” he said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson denied that there were any problems with the conditions at Moshannon. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson said. “In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

ELLIS staffers said reintegrating Dylan into school will mean helping him catch up on all he missed over the past 10 months while also processing the ongoing trauma of his detention.

While Dylan was incarcerated, his classmates ., prepared for or taken Regents exams they needed for graduation, and kept up with the guitar lessons Dylan enjoyed before his arrest.

Letters from his classmates helped sustain him as his detention stretched from days to months, and his optimism for a quick release faded. He watched new detainees — including grandparents and young kids — come and go while he remained locked up.

Dylan had no formal education in detention. But he was determined to do what he could to keep up with his English.

He practiced speaking with cellmates from places like China and the United Kingdom and to advocate for better treatment from the guards.

He devoured manga and Marvel comics donated by the advocacy group ROCC NYC, which played a critical role in supporting his family and keeping public attention on his case. He scoured an English dictionary from the facility’s library to learn new vocabulary but had no one to check his pronunciation. And he tried to read some classics, such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.

When he returned to ELLIS last week, Vega stopped him in the hallway to hand him a gift from a staffer in her district office: a copy of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” another classic Dylan had asked to read but couldn’t get a copy of.

Dylan, who had fled Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s repressive regime, had been , and spent 10 months in ICE custody, had said he wanted to understand Dante’s nine circles of hell.

ELLIS gears up to help Dylan adjust

Staffers at ELLIS are accustomed to helping students navigate all kinds of trauma, but they’d never had a student return from long-term incarceration, Bernard said.

Dylan’s counselors at ELLIS plan to refer him to a Spanish-speaking therapist through a mental health clinic located on the first floor of ELLIS’ building, Bernard said. And staffers will watch for any signs that he is struggling.

They’re also hoping to give Dylan chances to enjoy himself outside academic courses, though his ankle monitor is complicating those plans. His counselor enrolled Dylan in a swim class, but Dylan worried about getting the device wet.

Schools in New York are required to continue enrolling students through age 21, but state law doesn’t stop them from staying longer if the school agrees, Vega said.

ELLIS staffers don’t want to keep Dylan in high school longer than necessary but are encouraging him to stay for two years, so he can master English before applying to college.

In the meantime, he is eager to earn money to help his mom and siblings with rent. He hopes to take a bartending course so he can work at night without interfering with his school schedule.

Dylan worked long hours as a delivery driver before his arrest, and Bernard remains concerned about how long he’ll want to stay in school.

Staffers at ELLIS are working on finding him an internship that allows him to make money while learning new skills and burnishing his college resume.

Dylan said he’s willing to stay at ELLIS “as long as it takes.”

Dylan and ELLIS face an uncertain future

Dylan’s arrest, and the aggressive escalation in immigration enforcement it represented, cast a long shadow over ELLIS over the past 10 months, .

Students had begun to talk more openly about self-deportation. Pressure to abandon school for work grew as students confronted their diminished prospects for building a future in the U.S. And ELLIS’ enrollment, like that at immigrant-heavy schools across the city, has declined as border crossings slowed to a trickle.

Many of the ELLIS students who greeted Dylan Tuesday with tearful hugs and exclamations like “bienvenidos, loco!” (welcome back, crazy!) had endured their own brushes with immigration enforcement.

Dylan saw a friend whose mother was deported while he was in detention, leaving her without a way to pay rent or look after her toddler during school hours. Dylan’s is considering returning to Ecuador in part because of the fear of ICE. Another student saw Dylan’s ankle monitor and asked a staff member what the device did, adding that her dad had one too, Bernard said.

And when Dylan greeted two fellow Venezuelan students, one asked if he’d had to sleep on the floor — noting that’s where he’d slept after being detained while crossing the border. “I know the floor,” Dylan responded with a wry smile.

During lunch time, Dylan settled into a booth with friends and munched on mozzarella sticks. He had a newfound appreciation for school cafeteria food.

His friendships were what Dylan missed most about ELLIS, and there was lots to catch up on. The conversation soon turned to an ordinary high school concern: Dylan had to figure out what color to dye his hair next.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

“These support systems are what students really rely on,” one girl told the board. “As someone who struggles a lot with being overwhelmed and anxious, sometimes I just need someone to talk to.”

The layoffs will help reduce an $8.6 million budget deficit, due in part to the loss of 350 students. 

Sarah Neville, a board member in the Boston-area district, knows one reason enrollment is down. Under federal law, districts can’t ask whether students are U.S. citizens, but almost 90% of the 5,700-students are Latino and 47% are English learners. The state education agency estimates that the population of English learners in Massachusetts schools has since 2024. Officials from Chelsea and other metro-area districts say as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in last fall.

“We’re low hanging fruit for ICE because so many of our folks are undocumented,” Neville said. “When they say, ‘We’re going to go target Boston,’ you find the vans actually hanging out in Chelsea.”

The district is among several across the country now confronting the financial impact of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. Whether students are absent from school, families have been detained, or they’ve left the district or the country on their own, the empty desks add up.

Districts no longer have federal COVID relief funds to fall back on, and many already saw steep enrollment declines during the pandemic. The Chelsea board is one of asking the legislature for one-time grants to help address the shortfall. With fixed costs like payroll and contracts with vendors, a sharp drop in enrollment “creates chaos,” Neville said.

In Texas, officials from , and several districts in the are among those who say the immigration crackdown has contributed to further enrollment loss and, with it, potential drops in state funding. 

Districts’ heightened concerns over finances come as conservatives increasingly argue that American taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill to educate undocumented students in the first place. 

During a heated , members of a House judiciary subcommittee argued that the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn , a landmark 1982 ruling in a Texas case that guaranteed children a right to a public education, regardless of citizenship status.

“The financial costs of Plyler are undoubtedly staggering, clearly representing a significant burden on localities,” said Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, who chaired the hearing. “But it isn’t just fiscal costs we should be worried about. Our nation’s classrooms routinely deal with illegal alien students, many of whom know little to no English and may struggle with other learning disabilities.”

Pointing to Census Bureau figures, a from the subcommittee estimated that educating non-citizen students in U.S. schools costs about $68 billion a year. But during the hearing, Democrats highlighted of providing students access to education, like $633 billion paid in state and local income taxes and contributions to the U.S. economy worth more than $2.7 trillion.

The witnesses included James Rogers, senior counselor with the conservative America First Legal Foundation, who called the Plyler opinion ”egregiously wrong from the start” and an example of judicial overreach. He predicted that the current conservative majority on the court would overturn it if given the opportunity. Republicans in like have proposed legislation to collect students’ immigration status. If one of those bills passes, opponents are expected to challenge it in court.

But Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said that excluding undocumented students from school or charging tuition would mean “only certain classes of children whose parents can afford to pay are entitled to the blessings of liberty and the hope of a better future.” 

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, warned that at a time when chronic absenteeism remains above pre-pandemic levels, non-citizen children wouldn’t be the only ones out of school if the court overturned Plyler.

“It will extend beyond the families to peers and ultimately it will be impossible to enforce truancy laws,” he said. “Any child who doesn’t want to be in school will know to simply say ‘I’m undocumented.’ ”

The ‘bottom line’

For now, most Texas districts want to hang on to as many students as possible.

“When you’re a rural school district, every kid has a big impact on your bottom line,” said Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators. “When you lose five or 10 kids, you have to cut programming. You can’t cut teachers, so you have to start looking for other ways to do it.”

He expects to see a request during next year’s legislative session to allow for some “transition period” before funding drops, but “whether something passes is another question.”

In California, where state funding is based on districts’ average daily attendance, Gov. Gavin Newsom last October that would have added immigration enforcement as one of the emergencies that triggers a waiver of the funding rule. The change was unnecessary, he said.

In Minnesota, districts are still hoping for some relief. On their behalf, a national nonprofit to temporarily suspend a state law that requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. The legislation allows exemptions for emergencies.

, in which the Trump administration deployed roughly 4,000 ICE agents to the Minneapolis area, “no doubt qualifies as a calamity that would trigger application of the exemption,” leaders of the National Center for Youth Law wrote to state House and Senate leaders last month. 

Fridley Public Schools, outside Minneapolis, has lost 20 students because of the 15-day rule.Ìę

“Some of our children have been in an apartment for 14 weeks and haven’t been able to leave,” Superintendent Brenda Lewis said on a recent webinar. 

Roughly 100 more have left since the surge, possibly taking advantage of the state’s open enrollment policy to relocate to other districts. The loss means a $1 million hit to the district’s $51 million budget. The district also missed out on $131,000 in meal reimbursements from the federal government because low-income students weren’t in school to eat breakfast and lunch, Lewis said. 

Fridley’s enrollment would have been down another 400 students if the district hadn’t quickly implemented a virtual learning program, Lewis said. But federal agents used the device distribution process to apprehend those they suspected to be undocumented, she said. 

“We had ICE agents arresting people because they knew they were coming for the Chromebooks,” said Lewis, whose district is part of against the Trump administration over its policy of allowing immigration enforcement near schools and other “sensitive” locations. “ICE agents will board your buses. They’ll board your vans. They’ll pull the vehicle over and start interviewing children about immigration status. By interviewing, I mean interrogating.”

‘In-your-face presence’

The Trump administration recently such actions in an effort to end a government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. Julie Sugarman, who studies immigration policy affecting K-12 schools at the Migration Policy Institute, said a “less-aggressive” approach near school grounds would likely lead some missing students to return. 

“The in-your-face presence absolutely is causing people to stay home,” she said.

The Chicago Public Schools last fall saw steep declines in attendance that coincided with , according to by Kids First Chicago, an advocacy group, and the Coalition for Authentic Community Engagement, representing multiple nonprofits. On Sept. 29, the Monday after enforcement activity began, nearly 14,000 students at schools serving high percentages of Latino students were absent, the report showed. 

The district uses enrollment counts from the early part of the school year to make budget and staffing decisions. If students missed school on those days, or if the district eventually dropped students out for extended periods, those absences could affect funding, explained Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.

District leaders can only estimate how many undocumented students are entering, or leaving, their schools, and that’s a problem, Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in testimony before the House subcommittee. She blamed that warned districts against asking for students’ or parents’ citizenship status for enrollment purposes. 

While many English learners are U.S. citizens, she called out districts under state takeover, like and nearby , which have English learner populations above 30%, according to the state. “Illegal students,” she said, are impacting schools as a whole. 

“Teachers are being forced to 
 do Google Translate on their phones,” she said. “All of these things obviously impact the total education system, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said immigration enforcement affects all students. He pointed to Willmar, Minnesota, about 150 miles west of the Twin Cities and the site of a Jennie-O turkey plant that employs many . It’s the town where ICE agents in a Mexican restaurant and then returned to detain the owners and a dishwasher. 

In December, as rumors of an ICE raid spread, hundreds of kids, including white students, stayed out of school, Superintendent Bill Adams . 

“I remember walking in the hallways going, ‘Holy God, where are all the kids?’” said a district employee who declined to speak for attribution due to the sensitivity of the topic. “It was eerie.”

In October, Adams said enrollment in the 4,400-student district was down by over 170 students, amounting to a loss of more than $4 million. To make up for some of that gap, the district is it used to teach independent living skills, like cooking and doing the laundry, to older students with disabilities. 

“It’s just hit our community really bad,” the employee said.  

President Donald J. Trump, who watched from the gallery Wednesday in unprecedented fashion while the government made its case, signed an on his first day back in office last year banning birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. His plan would also exclude babies born here whose parents are temporary residents.

Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the Constitution in 1868 by the 14th Amendment, which states: “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.” 

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing for the government, told the court he recognized the amendment was adopted just after the Civil War to grant citizenship to those newly freed from enslavement and their children, “whose allegiance to the United States had been established by generations of domicile here.” 

It did not, however, grant citizenship to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens, he said. And, Sauer maintained, unlike newly freed people, “those visitors lack direct and immediate allegiance to the United States.”

“For aliens, lawful domicile is the status that creates the requisite allegiance,” he said. “For decades following the clause’s adoption, commentators recognized that the children of temporary visitors are not citizens, and illegal aliens lack the legal capacity to establish domicile here. Unrestricted birthright citizenship contradicts the practice of the overwhelming majority of modern nations. It demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship.”

Several of the justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, appeared skeptical of Sauer’s reasoning, peppering him with pointed questions and casting doubt on key elements of his argument. 

Many believe Trump is likely to lose this constitutional battle, though he has that hinged on presidential powers. Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, with three of the justices in that bloc — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — Trump appointees from his first term.

Cecilla Wang, the ACLU’s national legal director and lead attorney in the case that involves several statewide ACLUs and other legal advocacy groups, argued on behalf of the mothers and babies who would be affected by Trump’s order. In a less than three-minute opening statement, she said the 14th amendment is critical to our nation’s understanding of itself.

“Ask any American what our citizenship rule is, and they’ll tell you: Everyone born here is a citizen alike,” said Wang, whose Taiwanese parents came to the U.S. as graduate students. “That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it out of the reach of any government official to destroy.”

Birthright citizenship was codified and protected by the , which provided that “person[s] born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” 

This came decades after another critically related ruling, the 1898 Supreme Court case , which challenged the citizenship of a Chinese-American San Francisco resident. Ark, who was denied re-entry into the U.S. after visiting his parents in China, was found to be protected by the 14th amendment.Ìę

Wang believes that case bolsters her argument. She said, too, Trump’s executive order would throw the country into chaos. The president left the court minutes into her remarks. 

“The 14th Amendment’s fixed, bright-line rule has contributed to the growth and thriving of our nation,” she said. “It comes from text and history. It is workable, and it prevents manipulation. The executive order fails on all those counts. Swathes of Americans would be rendered stateless. Thousands of American babies will immediately lose their citizenship. And if you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans — past, present and future â€” could be called into question.”

While some members seemed more amenable to her arguments, conservative Justice Samuel Alito asked her about babies born in the United States who do not automatically become citizens, including the children of ambassadors, for example. 

“If those who framed and adopted the 14th Amendment had wanted to limit the citizenship test to just those specific groups that you concede fall outside the birthright rule, why didn’t they refer to those groups?” he asked. 

Wang said the answer was baked into the 14th amendment by the language that guarantees citizenship outside a few rare exceptions of those not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Gorsuch said Wang had “good stuff on her side.” She, in turn, said the Trump administration’s proposed approach to citizenship contradicts what earlier leaders sought to achieve. 

“We can’t take the current administration’s policy considerations into account 
 to radically reinterpret the 14th amendment,” Wang said, adding she believed those who ratified it did, in fact, consider future immigration. “Contrary to the government’s arguments now, they wanted to grow this country, make sure we had a citizenry, populate the military and settle the country.”

But Sauer, the solicitor general, said birthright citizenship, as it stands, is “a powerful pull factor for illegal immigration and rewards illegal aliens who not only violate the immigration laws, but also jump in front of those who follow the rules.” 

And, he said, there is another problem. 

“It has spawned a sprawling industry of birth tourism as unaccounted thousands of foreigners from potentially hostile nations have fought to give birth in the United States in recent decades, creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States,” he said. 

When asked whether the government knew how many women came to the U.S. specifically to give birth, Sauer could not provide a solid figure. 

Several of the justices also questioned Sauer about his key argument that established legal domicile must exist to qualify for birthright citizenship, asking whether it referred to the domicile of parents or their offspring.

“Under the minimum definition of domicile,” Alito said, “a person’s domicile is the place where he or she intends to make a permanent home.” 

Normally, Alito said, one would think a person who is subject to arrest and removal could not establish domicile. But, he said, we have a unique situation in the United States where people may live here for years and be subject to deportation yet, “have in their minds made a permanent home here and have established roots — and that raises a humanitarian problem.”

Lower courts on numerous occasions have found Trump’s order unconstitutional and blocked its implementation. Since it was issued, Trump has launched a massive deportation campaign that has harmed students and schools and become with the American people — particularly after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“This is potentially the most important civics lesson of a generation,” said Adam Strom, co-founder and executive director of Re-Imagining Migration. “Ultimately, birthright citizenship is about who gets to claim their place in this country … stripping that in a moment of aggressive immigration enforcement could render (children) stateless.”

Such a person is not recognized as a citizen of any nation and therefore has very limited protection. The U.N. estimated in 2019 that there were more than 4.2 million stateless  people around the world but the actual number is believed to be more than . 

Alejandra VĂĄzquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, and director of the said undoing birthright citizenship would be a “disaster” for hospitals and a “nightmare for families” — regardless of their status — as they would have to prove citizenship for their newborn child to have basic human rights.   

“It’s no coincidence that they’re seeking to strip birthright citizenship protections for U.S.-born children of immigrants while simultaneously attacking the foundational right to education for all granted by Plyler v. Doe,” she said, referring to the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that a child cannot be denied a public education based on their immigration status. 

“Together, these attacks undermine our democracy and threaten to create an underclass of millions of children with uncertain futures and no rights in this country,” she said. “It is fundamentally immoral, unconstitutional, anti-child and un-American.”

The court is expected to render a decision in late June or early July.

Some, freshly pressed passports in hand, end up in their parents’ country of origin — even when it’s not their own.

Others are sent to live with family or friends while an unlucky number are placed in foster care, their parents’ rights in jeopardy and reunification precarious. 

The teenagers among them are sometimes thrust into a parenting role themselves: This overnight push into adulthood can leave them managing mortgages while their peers are picking prom dresses in the first of many sacrifices, immigrant advocates told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. 

“A lot of these older siblings are forgoing college plans and looking for work, trying to figure out how to be mom and dad for their siblings,” said Wendy D. Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families for The Center for Law and Social Policy.  

An 18-year-old Texas resident was left without parents or his U.S.-born siblings more than a year ago when his entire family was stopped by federal agents as they were driving to get medical care for his seriously ill sister. All ended up being sent to Mexico. Using the pseudonym Fernando HernĂĄndez GarcĂ­a, the young man testified before a House and Senate hearing last week that he was forced to give up college in order to work full time to try and keep the family home.

There are measures in place to help families with this unwanted transition. In 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued the , a federal guideline meant to ensure “immigration enforcement activities do not unnecessarily disrupt” parental rights. 

It allowed ICE to consider whether it needed to hold these immigrants. And if they were detained, the directive encouraged the agency to house them near their families so they could participate in child placement hearings. 

The agency was also advised to arrange transportation to and from court or otherwise allow parents or legal guardians to participate in such proceedings by phone or video.

“It required some sort of cooperation between ICE and local child welfare agencies,” Cervantes said. 

But this directive has been under attack for years. It was weakened during the first Trump administration, bolstered in the Biden era and diminished once again when Trump took office for the second time — and launched a mass deportation campaign.

found that the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children were arrested and detained in the first seven months of Trump’s second term. The news site also determined the Trump administration is per day as did the Biden administration. 

That 11,000 number will have ProPublica reported, if arrests and detentions continued at the same pace in the ensuing months.

The data obtained by ProPublica covers a period up to mid-August 2025. Some of the Trump administration’s most aggressive immigration enforcement sweeps occurred after that in targeted cities, including Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Minneapolis.  

“I do fear in the months ahead that we could see more instances where kids unnecessarily end up in the child welfare system because of the way ICE has been conducting its raids,” Cervantes said, adding its tactics have been carried out “in a way that really doesn’t give us any assurances they are abiding by their own policy to allow parents to make decisions about what happens to their kids at the time of arrest.”

Families too afraid to reach out

Added to this anxiety, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the execution of these and other directives, is in flux. The DHS is now in the second month of a partial government shutdown as congressional Democrats push to rein in the actions of federal immigrant agents and make them more publicly accountable. 

The department is also in the midst of a leadership change: Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin will replace former Secretary Kristi Noem, who was

Despite concerns about his temperament — a former cage fighter, Mullin once tried to coax a union leader into a physical altercation during a Senate committee hearing — his nomination was .

It’s unclear how Mullin, a 2020 election denier, would wield his authority. But he has said he and recently defended the killing of two Minneapolis residents who protested the government’s immigration enforcement efforts, calling victim Alex Pretti “deranged.” He later said he should not have made the comment, but declined to apologize for it. 

Parents considering their family’s future in the current environment are sure to wonder what comes next as they contemplate the limited tools available to them, including , which allows people subject to immigration enforcement in some states to designate a caretaker for their kids. 

It’s a valuable lever, said Julie Babayeva, supervising attorney with the New York Legal Assistance Group: It goes into effect the moment someone is detained. But many families are reluctant to apply for it, she said. 

“We have been talking to PTAs, schools and community organizations in heavily immigrant communities,” Babayeva said. “It’s just difficult for people to trust this. They think, ‘What if I tell you my phone number and that leads to ICE coming to my house?’ People don’t understand that we’re not giving this information out to anyone, that it is confidential.”

shows 19 million children in the U.S. have at least one immigrant parent and that 1 in 6 — or 9 million school-aged children — live in a household with at least one noncitizen adult. An overwhelming majority of these kids are U.S. citizens. 

A Los Angeles teacher, who asked to remain anonymous because of her own citizenship status, recalled the case of two elementary school-aged children — and a toddler — left with their nearly 80-year-old grandmother, who had to return to work to support them after their parents were taken by ICE. 

Such disruptions inflict enormous psychological and emotional damage on children, she said. 

“They’ve heard the rhetoric of Trump saying he’s going after criminals and though they know that’s not true, they still don’t understand why their parents would be targeted,” she said. 

Roughly were deported in Trump’s first year in office and of the in ICE detention as of February, more than 73% had no criminal convictions. 

Eric Marquez, a teacher at New York City’s ELLIS Preparatory Academy, which serves older, immigrant students, said that from a classroom perspective, what stands out most is that these newcomers often present as remarkably composed. 

“They tend to put on a brave face, adapt quickly on the surface and rarely bring up in conversation the people in their lives who may have been detained or deported,” he said. “There’s often an understatedness to it.”

At the same time, teachers can sometimes see the impact indirectly, including shifts in focus, attendance and energy, he said. 

Ellis Prep’s own Dylan Contreras was among the first high school students to be detained by ICE when he was arrested after a May 2025 court appearance. Held in a Pennsylvania detention center for 10 months, he was and returned to school for the first time March 24.

Immigrant families are not the only ones puzzled and angry over the administration’s tactics. Residents in Springfield, Ohio, worried their Haitian neighbors will be deported because their Temporary Protective Status is in jeopardy, have stepped up to do something about it — in this case, house their children. 

One woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of attracting stirred up by Trump, secured emergency foster care credentials to support kids who might need somewhere safe to stay while they wait for a more permanent placement. The process took eight weeks to complete, she told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

“I am ready for 0 to 18,” she said of the age of children she could take in at a moment’s notice. “I want to keep siblings together.”

A sudden rush of unhoused kids felt imminent earlier this year when Haitians’ protective status was set to expire and word spread that federal immigration agents would soon arrive in Springfield to deport them. After some 600,000 Venezuelans lost their last year, a lawyer representing the group said “hundreds and potentially thousands of Venezuelan nationals (had)

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court prohibited the Trump administration from ending Haitian deportation protections and in the case in late April. 

Separation not easily undone 

Once separated, family reunification can be difficult, notes Gabrielle Oliveira, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who has studied immigration for years. Bureaucratic hurdles mean it can take months for a U.S. citizen child to get a passport to join their parents in a foreign country. 

Oliveira said, too, some of the children who enter foster care have family eager to shelter them but they won’t step forward because they are too afraid to interact with the government.

These new forms of family separation are among many fears undocumented immigrants face. But it’s not the worst of them, Oliveira and other advocates said: Detention is by far the most frightening prospect. 

“It’s been harder and harder to get in touch with people who are detained,” Oliveira said. “Sometimes months go by and (federal authorities) don’t even tell you where they are. So, parents are even more worried about that than the actual deportation.”

And, she said, limited communication with family makes it challenging to come to a conclusion on child care. 

“You can’t make decisions,” Oliveira said. “You can’t make phone calls. You can’t figure out what the plan is.”

Already, Cervantes said, her office has seen the fallout. 

“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” she said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”

And there are other, practical issues that make it hard to reunite in a foreign country, Oliveira said, recalling one family trying to meet up in South America. 

“The dad got deported and the mom was here with the kids, and then she was trying to leave and go back to Brazil — but she was nervous that if she went to the airport, she would be arrested,” Oliveira said. 

When children are left with undocumented relatives, it’s nearly impossible for them to leave the United States to deliver the kids to their parents, said Shaina Simenas, co-director for the Young Center’s Technical Assistance Program.

“If you have a young child that is left with another relative who has their own immigration needs, how would you get them to the country of origin?” she said. “We’re working with a lot of families who are from Venezuela, and there are so many challenges even getting Venezuelan passports — or getting flights to Venezuela. And, of course, there is the financial toll of buying international flights and paying for passports and travel documents.”

Simenas believes poor record-keeping on the part of the government means a lack of accountability. 

“ICE doesn’t consistently and reliably identify whether adults are caregivers for children and so that alone makes it harder to track what might have happened to their children after a parent was taken,” she said. 

Many families separated during Trump’s first term have not seen justice, she noted. Nearly 1,000 children were still waiting to reunite with their parents in 2023, according to . 

“For families being separated now,” she said, “I think there are even fewer ways to track them, to be able to support and ensure they have access to reunify.”

Written in response to the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good during federal immigration operations, the song offered more than commentary. It interpreted a national crisis, asking listeners to confront what state power looks like when it arrives in neighborhoods, on sidewalks and in the lives of ordinary families. 

That is precisely why this moment belongs not only on playlists and opinion pages, but in civic education.

Since then, the political terrain has shifted, but not in ways that make the issue less urgent for schools. President Donald Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after months of political fallout surrounding the administration’s immigration crackdown. 

Around the same time, reporting showed that the administration had scaled back the most visible ICE tactics in Minneapolis, there from roughly 3,000 agents to about 650, and shifted toward more targeted operations after the public backlash. Arrests declined in February, but ICE remains active, and the economic and civic damage in Minneapolis continues.

The retreat matters. It suggests that public protest, documentation by witnesses, investigative reporting and political pressure forced a tactical recalibration. But it also underscores a deeper lesson for educators: Students are living through a period in which official narratives, video evidence, journalism, protest and art are colliding in real time. 

Schools cannot pretend these are merely political controversies happening somewhere else. They are contemporary case studies in how democracy works, how it fails and how citizens push back.

The arrest earlier this month of , a Nashville-based reporter for a Spanish-language news outlet, makes that lesson even harder to ignore. Rodriguez Florez had been covering immigration arrests in Tennessee. Then ICE detained her, despite her pending asylum case, valid work permit and marriage to a U.S. citizen. 

Moments like this one shed light on why protest music is produced in response to government actions to silence individuals, raising essential civic questions for students to consider: Who gets to document state power? What happens when the people telling a community’s story become vulnerable themselves? And how should a democracy respond when journalism, immigration status, and political retaliation appear to converge?

Springsteen’s song is not a lone artistic response. Recent in Rolling Stone traces a broader wave of anti-ICE protest music released in the wake of the Minneapolis operations. Billy Bragg wrote “City of Heroes.” NOFX released “Minnesota Nazis.” My Morning Jacket put out a benefit project, Peacelands, in solidarity with communities affected by ICE brutality. Bon Iver shared a live track to raise money for immigrant legal defense. Low Cut Connie and Dropkick Murphys have added their own contributions to this growing soundtrack of dissent.

Another Rolling Stone  places Springsteen’s song in a longer tradition of “instant protest songs,” linking it to works such as Woody Guthrie’s “,” written in response to a 1948 plane crash that killed 28 Mexican migrant farmworkers being deported; Nina Simone’s “” and Bob Dylan’s “,” written after the 1963 assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers; and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “,” about the Ohio National Guard’s killing of four Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War.

This history is what makes this such a consequential educational moment. Protest songs are not simply cultural accessories to political events. They are historical artifacts, rhetorical arguments and emotional archives. They help listeners name what has happened, assign meaning to it and imagine what moral response is required. In classrooms, they can help students examine competing claims about law, order, belonging and dissent without reducing complex issues to partisan slogans. 

Analyzing protest music asks students to interpret voice, perspective, evidence, omission and historical context. These are not ideological activities designed to indoctrinate youth. They are learning opportunities to build critical thinking and civic literacy skills.

The question is not whether teachers should tell students what to think about Bruce Springsteen, ICE, Kristi Noem or the Trump administration. The question is whether students should have the chance to grapple with how democracies narrate force, how communities contest official accounts, and how music, journalism, and protest shape public understanding. 

In elementary school, that might mean introducing age-appropriate examples of peaceful protest and the role of songs in movements for fairness. In middle school, it could mean comparing lyrics with speeches or media accounts and asking what each includes, emphasizes, or leaves out. In high school, it could mean examining how protest music enters political life as argument, memory, and civic witness.

The broader lesson is that protest is not alien to American history; it is one of the ways people have always argued about freedom. From abolitionist songs to civil-rights anthems to Springsteen’s Minneapolis lament, music has carried democratic conflict across generations. 

It has helped individuals feel the stakes of policies they might otherwise encounter only as abstractions. It has translated public tragedy into public argument. And that argument, however uncomfortable, is not something schools should avoid. It is something students should be prepared to enter with the skills of engaging in productive and divergent thinking on complex civic issues.

At a moment when federal officials are trying to soften the optics of immigration enforcement without abandoning its underlying machinery, and when a journalist covering immigration can herself be detained, schools should resist the temptation to retreat into silence. Young people need more opportunities, not fewer, to interpret the music, reporting, speeches and images shaping public life around them.

A democracy worthy of the next generation depends on an informed citizenry capable of productive disagreement. Protest songs do not threaten that project. They give students one of the essential ways to practice it.

That’s how children — all U.S. citizens — and their parents described their treatment by federal immigration agents in accounts delivered in Washington, D.C., Tuesday at a joint House and Senate hearing. 

The teens told lawmakers these encounters have left them unable to sleep, concentrate on school, plan for their future or feel safe in any setting.

“Whenever I hear sirens or I see an officer, my heart starts racing,” said Arnoldo Bazan, 16, who described a violent incident with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Oct. 23, 2025. “I don’t even know when I’ll see my father again. This is not the America I know.”

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, replied to requests for comment. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said they would need more time to respond.

Bazan said he was assaulted by ICE agents on his way to school with his father last fall when they stopped at a McDonald’s to celebrate him making a varsity team. Just then, Bazan said, a car with tinted windows and flashing lights pulled them over. 

Soon, multiple unmarked vehicles approached. 

“Armed men with masks jumped out and started banging on the windows,” Bazan said. “They never identified themselves or explained why we were stopped. We didn’t know who these men were. I started recording on my phone. One of the unmarked cars rammed into our car multiple times. I even felt our car lift.”

Agents grabbed his father and Bazan ran to help. 

“One officer put me in a choke hold and told me, ‘You’re done,’” the boy said, taking short breaks to compose himself. “His grip was so tight, I wondered if I would even make it out alive. With all of my strength, I screamed that I was underage and from the United States. When the officers finally stopped, I began telling everybody who could hear me that these officers had tried to flip our car, and that I had proof of my phone.”

Federal agents confiscated his cell, he testified. 

“The officer put me and my dad in the car,” Bazan said. “They mocked us. They told me that I was gay for crying, an illegal, an illegal idiot, a border hopper, and other demeaning words.”

Bazan said the officers drove them to his house where he and his father, who was subsequently deported to Mexico, “prayed for one last time. I tried to hug him, but he couldn’t hug me back because he was handcuffed.”

He said his backpack was returned but not his phone and when he traced it, it turned up inside a kiosk that sells electronics. Bazan said local police told him they couldn’t take any action against federal officers.

Bazan, who suffered a neck injury, was taken to the hospital that day and given morphine for his pain, he said. He told the committee his body ached after the incident, that he couldn’t sleep and missed school.

He was one of three teens who spoke at the forum called by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

“Our efforts to document and elevate the stories of this regime’s heartless actions against children will continue, and we know that there are thousands more stories to be told,” Blumenthal said at the start, thanking the students and their parents for speaking and remarking on their bravery.  

The lawmakers released a minority staff report Tuesday entitled , saying it documents the cases of “128 children who have been injured, left unattended, or otherwise put at direct risk of harm due to operations of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Their action comes amid Democrats’ ongoing campaign to curtail federal immigration agents. They’re refusing to fund DHS, which is now in the second month of a partial government shutdown, until reforms and greater public accountability are put in place.

An 18-year-old, who used the pseudonym Fernando HernĂĄndez GarcĂ­a, said he has been living on his own for more than a year after his parents were deported to Mexico —Ìętaking his medically fragile U.S.-born sister with them. The girl cannot access treatment there because she is not a Mexican citizen, her brother said.Ìę

Garcia, recalling their apprehension, said it all began when the little girl woke up and said her head hurt. 

“My parents took this very seriously because the year before, she had an emergency surgery to remove a tumor,” Garcia said. “My parents and my five siblings got in the car and drove from South Texas to Houston so she could see a specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital. On the way, government officials stopped them at a checkpoint and deported everyone — even though my parents told them about my sister’s condition, even though my siblings are U.S. citizens.”

Garcia wasn’t with them, but his family had made this same trip many times before President Donald Trump took office for the second time and had no problems, he said: They’d present the girl’s proof of citizenship and a letter from the hospital explaining her medical needs and would be on their way. 

“When I heard the news I couldn’t breathe,” the teen said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. My mom worried about me returning to our home in South Texas alone, but I had to finish high school and I wanted to make sure I could do everything in my power to stay on top of the bills and keep the home my mom and dad had sacrificed so much for.”

Garcia had planned to attend college but instead spends all of his time working.

“I can’t think about the things my peers are doing because I honestly can’t relate,” he said. “The situation is a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.”

His family already missed his high school graduation, a milestone he thought they’d share.  

“If my parents were still here, they would have pushed me to go to college, to dream big, and they would have helped me to make it happen,” he said. 

Michelle Ramirez Sanan, 18 and from Chelsea, Massachusetts, plans to attend college in the fall, but said Tuesday that memories of her family’s ICE encounter have left her shaken and distracted. 

Sanan was restrained by federal agents after her mother and autistic 13-year-old brother, also a U.S. citizen, were dragged from their car while in their neighborhood and detained Sept. 26, 2025. 

Officers arrested Sanan’s 50-year old mother, who has legal status and has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. The teen, in her emotional testimony, recalled coming upon the scene. 

“My brother was crying next to my mom who was being pushed against the fence in handcuffs,” she said. “Most ICE officers were wearing masks. I could see they had guns.”

Sanan said she tried to run to them but was stopped by a federal agent. 

“My brother doesn’t speak very much because of his disability,” she said. “He doesn’t know how to explain that he’s an American citizen. I tried to protect him by yelling out, ‘My brother has autism’, but instead of helping him, the ICE officer kept blocking me and told me to shut up.”

Sanan, who has asthma, said she had trouble breathing. 

“Since that day, I have had a harder time focusing in school, taking care of myself, and managing my anxiety,” she said. “I have had trouble sleeping and headaches. I was so excited to enjoy my senior year before starting a new chapter in college. But now I spend so much of my time wondering why this happened to us.”

Educators recognize students’ pain. Zena Stenvik is the superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, which serves 3,400 children just north of Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Among her charges is 5-year-old , who galvanized national opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown after he was photographed in a blue bunny hat, wearing a Spiderman backpack, being detained by federal agents in January with his father.  

Liam languished in Texas’s for more than a week before he was released. He and his family, who hail from Ecuador, had their asylum claims denied this month and are now on a . 

The impact of DHS’s Operation Metro Surge on her students has been profound, Stenvik said: Seven have been detained, including at Dilley, and all six who have returned came back sick — and emotionally frayed. 

“We are seeing increased separation anxiety with students struggling to be apart from their parents during the school day,” she said. “We’re seeing heightened difficulty with transitions: One student who was detained in Texas now experiences distress when leaving the classroom to go to art or gym class. He reported that separation from their trusted teacher and classroom removes a sense of safety. We’re also seeing increased stress responses, such as fight, flight, freeze among students who experienced direct or indirect trauma.”

Some of the impacted children, one parent said, are very young. Anabel Romero, a mother of four who was born and raised in Idaho, described a shocking attack on Hispanic residents in Wilder, Idaho, on . 

Romero, her stepson and her three children, ages 14, 8 and 6, were among hundreds of people watching horse races that Sunday when they spotted a helicopter in the sky. A medical worker, Romero thought someone had been injured and it was there to help. 

“But then I saw people running and screaming, terrified,” she said. “Men in military style gear stormed in with weapons at the ready. The first thing I did was call my daughter and tell her not to get out of the truck and to take care of her brother and sister. I ran and hid in one of the horse stalls.” 

Armed men grabbed and beat Romero, she said, punching her in the head and kicking her. 

“One of them threatened to blow my head off,” she testified. “I couldn’t breathe, and they zip tied me in the back. After that, they brought me up and I told them I needed to get to my children. One of them actually laughed and said they were taking better care of them than I was.”

Her eldest daughter was also thrown on the ground, zip tied and suffered bruises all along her sides. Her two youngest were taken from the truck at gunpoint, she said. 

“They were alone and terrified,” Romero said. “When my children were with me, I couldn’t comfort them. They were crying and I was still zip tied in the back with no answers for why I was being detained.”

Her oldest daughter started having a panic attack, she said. 

“I feared she might hurt herself if she fainted,” Romero said. “I asked them to zip tie her in the front. They did, but she was still having a panic attack. We waited like that zip tied and scared for three hours
 They herded us like cattle and tied us up so that ICE could check everyone’s immigration status. Hundreds of people were at this family event — grandparents, infants.”

Her children are still suffering, Romero said.  

“That day completely changed our lives,” she said. “Our sense of safety and security was demolished.”

The committee heard, too, from Adreina Mejia from Arleta, California. She and her special needs 15-year-old son were separated, held at gunpoint and handcuffed by immigration agents outside of a local high school.

The agents had mistaken her boy for another child, she said. 

“The person who was with me just told my son, ‘Oh, we just confused you with somebody else, but look at the bright side, you’re gonna have an exciting story to tell your friends when you go back to school,’” she said. 

The incident has not left her son, Mejia said. 

“He will wake up crying,” his mother said. “He sees cars with tinted windows and he’s scared. He told me, ‘Mom, is it them?’” 

Growing fears about  â€” and confusion over federal “public charge” rules that can affect green card and visa applications — are prompting some California families to retreat from child care and early education programs, even when their children qualify.

Under federal immigration law, officials can deny green card and visa applications if they determine the applicant is likely to rely heavily on government assistance. Although many benefits cannot be considered for purposes of the “public charge” rule, advocates say many families avoid social service programs altogether out of an abundance of caution.

 in November by the current administration would repeal a 2022 rule that advocates say provided significant clarity on when the rule applies. During the previous Trump administration, the government made  what could be considered “public charge.” Even after those changes were rescinded, fears persist.

Advocates say the fear and confusion that are already impacting families could be far-reaching for a state like California, where it is estimated that nearly 1.1 million children have at least one parent who is undocumented, according to the . More than half of those children are U.S. citizens and over 250,000 under the age of 5.

“With public charge there’s a level of anxiety around signing up for public benefit programs, submitting information, and/or scrutiny that may be increased and make people uncomfortable because of whatever the public rhetoric may be or the perception that it creates risk,” said Stacy Lee, chief learning officer and senior managing director of early childhood at the nonprofit Children Now.

She noted that many child care providers are uniquely positioned to support families because they are not only aware of the impact of immigration raids, but many have also developed trust with immigrant families who might be confused about proposed policy changes.

While public charge does not apply to U.S. citizen children and affects only specific types of immigration cases, many families, including those with mixed citizenship status, still withdraw from public benefits programs out of fear that participation would jeopardize their residency or protection from deportation, advocates say.

“Even when I was representing clients as an immigration attorney and I would tell them 100% that I was sure they were not going to be affected, that their case was exempt from public charge, sometimes they just still wouldn’t [enroll in public programs] because the fear is so severe,” said Liza Davis, advocacy director at The Children’s Partnership.

What is the current policy on ‘public charge’?

The  affirms that the public charge test is used only in specific immigration cases and does not apply to a  of people, including asylum seekers, U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants and lawful permanent residents applying for citizenship.

“A public charge only shows up when you are an individual that is submitting an application for a very specific form of relief, which a lot of people don’t qualify for,” Davis confirmed.

Additionally, only  of certain benefit programs are considered.

Depending on a person’s specific immigration situation, cash assistance programs like CalWORKS could be considered for public charge tests. CalWORKs is California’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which many families rely on for benefits such as child care, stable access to food and other basic necessities, like diapers.

Davis encourages families to seek accurate information and assistance. She says concerns about public charge often spread by word-of-mouth among applicants who may be comparing cases without properly accounting for the complexity of the immigration system, which includes many different types of applications with varying rules.

“We’re not able to anticipate what will happen in a different administration, but if this need is absolutely essential for you and you qualify for it right now, then you should really consider taking the help because it’s so important to the well-being of the children in your household,” Davis said she advises families.

Further exacerbating the issue is the lack of definitive certainty on whether and when rules related to public charge may change.

“Public charge has just been historically weaponized,” and different federal administrations have either made or proposed changes, leaving a sense of instability,” said Davis. “The ebb and flow, the unknown of it, and the fact that we can’t say ‘this is not going to change’ — there is no guarantee.”

How child care providers can support immigrant families with young children

Lee from Children Now says that home-visiting programs, which provide parenting support in a young child’s home, are one way to keep families accurately informed about anticipated changes to their benefits and how they can remain connected to social services.

“The standout has been families who have access to home visiting have someone they can trust, that they can ask questions to,” Lee said. “They can talk to their home visitor, who can explain to them what’s going on, what’s real, what’s not real. It’s hard to navigate what’s actually happening versus what’s just a lot of aggressive words or what’s being held up in courts.”

In 2025, about 18,200 children from over 17,000 families in California received home visiting services, according to the . It is estimated that nearly 2.6 million children from nearly 2 million families in the state would benefit from home visiting services.

What is the latest proposed change?

The latest proposed change would mostly repeal the 2022 rule clarifying when public charge applies, but does not offer regulations to replace existing rules. Advocates argue that the lack of clarity can lead families to disenroll or avoid eligible public benefits.

The administration acknowledges that changes to public charge rules between 2019 and 2022, “heightened fears among immigrant families about participating in programs and seeking services, such as health coverage and care.”

The current proposal, filed by former Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, also recognizes the far-reaching impact of families withdrawing from public services out of fear. “DHS has determined that the rule may decrease disposable income and increase the poverty of certain families and children, including U.S. citizen children. DHS continues to believe that the benefits of the action justify the financial impact on the family.”

Cardona, a fellow at the , through his speeches and other appearances, continues to tell students their ability to speak more than one language is an enormous asset. Not only can it bring them career success, he says, but it deepens their . 

His praise for the multilingual community runs counter to the current administration’s agenda: President Donald Trump issued an executive order in July designating , a pronouncement that immediately sparked efforts to “minimize non-essential multilingual services (and) redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation.” 

Trump and his allies also rolled back longstanding that kept federal immigration agents . Children and their parents have been arrested during pickup and drop-off times, causing absenteeism to spike. And the schools and other groups that serve immigrants are scrambling to stay out of the spotlight, curbing outreach in many cases. 

The dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, too, has left the country’s 5 million English learners with little protection or as to their : After a historic round of cuts, the department’s Office of English Language Acquisition, for example, was left with . 

Cardona, who also works to shore up the leadership skills of other educators through his , said he’s hurt by what has happened to the department whose leadership he left in January 2025.

But even amid the chaos, Cardona sees hope. Trump’s power is temporary, he said. Education lasts a lifetime. 

“Despite what we’re hearing from this administration, the opposite is true,” Cardona said, when asked how he would advise multilingual learners today. “Just wait it out. You don’t have to change your stripes to be successful. I didn’t. Having two cultures and two languages is one of your greatest strengths.”

I caught up with Cardona last week and asked him about the future of multilingual learner education in the U.S. The 50-year-old, who began his career teaching fourth grade in his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut and will be a featured lecturer at Harvard, where he recently at the Kennedy School, was candid in his responses.

What are your three biggest concerns about the state of multilingual learner education right now?

That multilingualism is not being valued as a superpower, that the funding for basic support is up in the air and that it continues to be an ancillary afterthought in many of our communities, as opposed to a tool to provide a skill for students that can serve them well in a globally competitive society.

Programs serving multilingual learners are being sidelined. What’s happening here? 

It reminds me of when the Supreme Court made a decision about affirmative action and there was an extrapolation of intent. They said, “Now, we can’t have programs that support students from different backgrounds because that goes against what the Supreme Court said.” And so they extrapolate, they make up what it means for implementation.

It’s analogous to what is happening here. “Well, we’ve got to cut DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) so that means no parent support, no translating documents, no language line. We’re going to cut those things from the budget because we’re not sure that we want to continue to support ESL programs because the new secretary said no DEI, that we can’t favor one group over another.”

They’re extrapolating or blaming up to get away with cutting things that they don’t understand — or agree with in the first place. There is an overprescribing of an intent that was really never there. Part of it is to justify budget cut decisions or because in some places, now it’s not chic to promote multilingualism. So why bother?

There are places in our country — Arizona, for example — where there are . So, they took it further. This is what California went through in the ’90s and 2000s with (a voter-approved measure that required schools to teach immigrant children only in English). And so you have people doing underground work of multilingual education, which is sad, that in 2026 we have people hiding what they’re doing to promote multilingualism when in every other country it’s almost a prerequisite.

Because of what’s happening at the federal level, people have permission now to kind of get rid of some of the programming that we know supports students and families who are learning English — or multilingual programs where students are learning another language.

What is causing some districts and schools to do this? Is it racism or budgetary concerns? 

From my perspective, it’s a little bit of both. “Why are we spending money on these programs when we could spend it on something else?” It’s the low-hanging fruit, and quite frankly, you’re not going to see too many parents of Latino students speaking up at board meetings if they’re worried about being harassed by immigration. Because the browner you are, the more you’re subject to vilification. 

It starts at the top. You’ve got the president , murderers, painting a picture that immigrants are bad people.

To exclude racism would be Pollyannaish on my part, but to think that it’s only that would be minimizing the nuanced realities that many districts face, saying, “If I have to cut, I’m going to cut where I’m going to get the least resistance.”

How does it make you feel to see the Education Department dismantled? 

It hurts because I know the impact it’s going to have on the students furthest from opportunity. The damage that has been done in the last 12 months will take decades to correct. 

Why do you think it will take decades to repair what’s happening to multilingual education? 

I’ll start with the Office for Civil Rights. When you take out the arm of enforcement that ensures students’ civil rights are being protected, accountability is gone. So what does that mean? That it could be the Wild West and no one’s paying attention because we closed seven of the 12 offices whose job it was to make sure students’ civil rights were not being violated. 

When you cut — or threaten to cut — (English Language Acquisition grants) or you run applications for grants through an AI scanner to pick out the words “diversity” or “equity” to make sure you’re not giving grants to those grantees, you’re basically creating a culture of “don’t do this — or else.” 

And people, in order to get the funding they need to provide the basic needs in their districts, are going to move away from programs that could be viewed as helping address disparities in access and outcomes. 

And what about other moves inside the department? 

I see special education going to HHS (Department of Health and Human Services), and I often say they’re sending it to the least competent Kennedy. So, let’s look at what’s happening there. That department has been downsized as well. When you take 50% of the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and you dismiss half the people and then you take the other half and you send them over to the HHS, where they’ve diminished their staff, and now you’re asking them to do the supervision, oversight and support. When you remove that, you’re left with great variance throughout our country in the ability to provide services, support, and accountability. 

I would argue that the red states, the ones who voted for this administration, are the ones that are going to suffer the most — the rural communities where they only have their local public school. They don’t have other options. 

This administration will only last for a finite amount of time. How might a new administration roll back these changes?  

I have hope in not just the federal government picking up where it left off, but I am very encouraged by my conversations with the multilingual learner community. They’re building alliances that do not rely on the federal government — because they checked out. 

They’re developing a framework. For example, , (an advocacy group for multilingual learners) is led by the same people that fought Proposition 227 30 years ago. They built an alliance back then and they created what’s called the State Seal of Biliteracy. So, when they , they said, “We’re going to acknowledge that if you’re multilingual, you’re going to get a State Seal of Biliteracy, a badge of achievement.” And when I was secretary, all 50 states adopted that seal. 

The pendulum is going to swing back, but the federal government is only going to be one player. I’m counting on these coalitions to accelerate the remediation and innovation around English language development. I see that happening across the country.

If you could speak directly to multilingual learner teachers, what would you say? 

Consider yourself blessed and fortunate that you’re serving at a time when our students need you, where you’re providing that emotional safe harbor. Your words are the ones that they’re going to remember — not what’s being said on CNN or Fox News.

Absenteeism is rampant in the immigrant community. How can schools get these students back in the classroom?

This is not the answer for that question, but the first thing that came to mind is vote. We need to get off our asses and see the impact that this had on our students, and we need to be angry. We need to not allow for this to continue any longer than it needs to.

With regard to the students that are right now home, I struggle to look a parent in the face in a community where they’re being harassed by ICE and say, “Send them to school, don’t worry, they’re 100% safe,” because we know that’s not true.

What I will say to those families is know your rights. And also, know the culture in which you’re sending your children. Is that school protecting your child? Will you have alert calls? Does your district have a practice to prevent schools from becoming hubs of immigration (enforcement) efforts? 

In many parts of our country, we’re not protecting our students from having our schools be the places where these raids are happening. I had a student in my hometown get picked up when he was going to an immigration center to check in, as he was supposed to. He missed graduation because he was following the rules.

What do you make of this moment for us as a nation?Ìę

We’re going through a period right now where a lot of the fundamental principles of democracy are being questioned. It’s a stain on our beautiful country’s history. The pandemic of prejudice that we’re dealing with now is harder to lead through than the pandemic of disease that we went through five years ago. We got through the pandemic of disease because we came together. What’s happening now is this pandemic of hate and prejudice is pulling us apart. But if you look deeper, you see stories of resilience and of the power of unity.

Dylan Lopez Contreras, the first New York City public school student detained by federal immigration officials during President Donald Trump’s second term, was released Tuesday night after spending 10 months in federal custody, according to his mother and his legal team.

Dylan, now 21, was a student at ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a Bronx school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students, and his arrest was one of the highest-profile early examples of an in immigration enforcement last year in which officers arrested immigrants in the hallways of federal court following their legal hearings. arrest.

Kristin Kepplinger, a spokesperson from the New York Legal Assistance Group, which had been representing Dylan in his immigration court case and federal habeas corpus lawsuit, said the reason for his release wasn’t yet clear, as they had yet to review his release documents.

His legal team was thankful to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration and to the office of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer who’d been advocating for his release, Kepplinger added.

Dylan’s federal habeas corpus petition was denied. An immigration judge also , but his lawyers appealed.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment on Dylan’s release.

A native of Venezuela, Dylan first entered the country in 2024 through a program under former President Joe Biden that allowed migrants to make appointments to cross the border and seek asylum.

Dylan’s arrest quickly earned local and national attention, prompting former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to file an amicus brief seeking his release, along with rallies and calls from national elected officials. Last month, Dylan’s mother, Raiza Contreras, attended the State of the Union with Sen. Chuck Schumer.

““[I’m] emotional,” Raiza told Chalkbeat in a brief interview Wednesday in Spanish. “I’m grateful to God first and foremost and to all the people who were present in this case.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul that she mentioned Dylan’s name in a recent meeting with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan.

Mamdani said the city was “overjoyed” by Dylan’s release.

“Throughout this injustice, Dylan has shown remarkable strength, resilience, and courage,” the mayor said in a statement.

Even as federal immigration enforcement swept up other city students — some of whom subsequently — Dylan remained in custody in Western Pennsylvania for nearly a year. In a September , he described the frustration and depression of having his life put on hold.

Norma Vega, the principal of ELLIS, where staffers and helped coordinate legal and other forms of support for the family, said she believes the sustained public campaign for Dylan’s release paid off.

“It confirmed for me we did the right thing,” she said. “Keeping him in the public eye, he became the face of every immigrant youth across the country.”

She added: “It was about this kid who they [the federal government] inaccurately thought was alone 
 and how important it was for us to let them know he’s not alone.”

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of .

Dr. Lara Jones still remembers her visceral reaction to the image of Liam Ramos. It wasn’t the most famous one, of with ICE officers behind him. It was one from days later, of Liam while both were in custody in Texas.

“He looked pale, he looked sickly. He looked like a completely different child,” she said. “When I saw that image, my doctor brain turned on. I was like, this kid is sick. He needs medical attention.”

Jones, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric critical care medicine, can quickly assess a lot based on a child’s appearance.

“I can tell in the first 10 seconds that I look at you from the door, before I even put my hands on you, before I put a stethoscope on your chest — I can look at you, and I can know right away, you are going to be fine, or you are really sick and you need attention,” she added. “He looked very sick.”

Jones couldn’t sleep that night. Liam’s well-being consumed her while at work the next day at a California hospital. After a round of patient visits, she went into a private room and “broke down and cried.” She needed to do something.

Since then, Jones has become part of — all pediatricians, all mothers — in immigration detention out of concern for their health. They warn that the detention of these children is causing severe and lasting harm to their mental and physical health, and say that of kids allegedly facing delayed and inadequate medical care under DHS demands urgency and transparency.

“We are traumatizing children, and we are putting them in dangerous environments,” Jones said.

These doctors are in detention, to help families in need of emergency assistance and to demand accountability so that children who remain in custody receive evidence-based standards of care.

“We are mothers of young children, and we are doing all of this in between shifts, after working night shifts, during nap time,” Jones said. “We are just doing as much as we can, in the time that we have, while we are working full time and being full-time moms.”

Just weeks ago, Jones and the other women — Dr. Ashley Marie Cozzo of Connecticut and Dr. Anita K. Patel of Washington, D.C. — did not know each other personally. Now they’re in contact daily through a group text that pings at all hours of the day. They use the chat to think through advocacy ideas, to troubleshoot potential challenges and to align their priorities.

“We’re trying to figure out every day in our brainstorming, ‘What’s next? What’s next?’” said Cozzo, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and neonatal-perinatal medicine. “I love a group project, and this is such a unique situation.”

Patel, who is double board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric critical care medicine, said the quick camaraderie among the women has “reinvigorated” her after years of online campaigns around unrelated advocacy issues.

“You have three critical care doctors for kids, and there are certain qualities inherent in pediatric critical care specialists — we will not stop until we have either saved a kid or we know that there is no chance of saving them,” she said. “We all have that personality, because literally that’s what we do in our jobs.”

Liam’s story propelled their cause. As the image of Liam seemingly in a lethargic state ricocheted across the internet, the women shared their outrage with medical peers. Jones and Cozzo circulated a small online petition calling for Liam to be returned home, and amid the national outcry, . (The Ecuadorian family has an active asylum case, and it’s unclear for now whether they will be able to permanently stay in the United States.)

The doctors then connected with Patel, and the three agreed to work together to bring more awareness to other children in detention. Patel said the power of imagery catapulted Liam’s story.

“If he was an older kid, or even if he was Liam without the bunny hat — the outcry may not have come,” Patel said. “And all I could think was Liam deserved that outcry, and every single kid in detention needs that outcry.”

The trio has fixated on the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the facility near San Antonio that houses families, in part because they are in frequent communication with a journalist, Lidia Terrazas, on people impacted by detention.

When Terrazas highlighted in early February the story of a 2-month-old baby named Juan Nicolás, the case crystallized the doctors’ urgency. The boy had been in respiratory distress while at Dilley, but had allegedly received delayed care as his condition worsened. He was sent by ambulance to a hospital on February 16, according to Patel, after an unresponsive episode where detention officials could not wake him. DHS later deported the baby, his mother and other family members, including a 16-month-old, to Mexico.

Jones was able to connect by text with Mireya López Sánchez, Juan Nicolás’ mother. The postpartum mother said that her milk had dried up while at Dilley. Patel is still nursing her toddler; the parallels — the universal urge a mother has to feed her baby — linger for her.

When Patel nurses her own child, “I think of Mireya, whose milk dried up because she was so stressed and nutritionally deficient that she couldn’t breastfeed, and then when she couldn’t breastfeed, then she couldn’t afford clean water that wasn’t brown or smelled like chlorine to make formula.”

, which has partnered with the doctors to raise money for commissary funds, detainees at Dilley have to spend $40 to buy a four-pack of large water bottles and $35 for a 12-pack of small water bottles.

A spokesperson for DHS did not respond to a request for comment from The 19th, but the agency of malnourished or mistreated children and claims people in detention have access to medical care and adequate food. Emergency crews were called to the facility at least 11 times since September for children with symptoms including bronchitis, respiratory distress and fever, .

CoreCivic, a private company that runs the Dilley facility, deferred questions to DHS but that claims of inadequate medical care are inaccurate and “directly contradicted by the comprehensive, around-the-clock care delivered by our licensed physicians, dentists, advanced practice providers, nurses and mental health professionals.”

Jones doesn’t buy that when it comes to Juan Nicolás, whose mother reportedly told officials that her newborn was having difficulty breathing and was vomiting. Mireya said that instead of being seen by a medical professional, guards at the facility monitored the newborn for two days before he was sent to the hospital in distress.

“I don’t know what they were assessing, but they’re not assessing it through the lens of a pediatric expert,” Jones said. “They’re not doing the appropriate medical workup. So that case alone is proof of delayed care and denied appropriate care, because the appropriate care for a 2-month-old with difficulty breathing and vomiting is to go to the emergency department.”

Cozzo noted that several children died in 2018 and 2019 while in immigration , or . In 2023, — reportedly after her mother repeatedly sought medical care for her.

“We have a precedent of the highest degree of loss: children’s lives,” Cozzo said. “It has happened before, the things that these women are worried about — it’s only going to be a matter of time before we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past and another child dies.”

As the doctors circulated Juan Nicolás’ story online, they connected to help . They also helped secure a hotel room for Juan Nicolás’s family amid their deportation to Mexico. They are now raising money . As they hear of specific cases, including those of and , they try to spring into action by either raising public awareness or funds.

The medical community has long expressed alarm about how children’s health can deteriorate in immigration detention. concluded that children’s mental health suffers and there’s a cascade of ripple effects, including anxiety disorders, depression and developmental regression and delays. The issue has been examined , with similar outcomes.

There are also standards of care for immigrant children in detention, and states that children should not be detained for more than 20 days. But that some children are being held in detention for much longer — weeks or months. The publication estimated at the time that at least 3,800 children under 18 had been booked into ICE since President Donald Trump, who campaigned on mass deportation, returned to office. More than 1,300 children were held last year for longer than 20 days.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has its call for limited exposure of children in DHS facilities. Dr. Sural Shah is chair of AAP’s Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health. She said the council, which was very responsive during the first Trump administration’s family separation policy, has been accelerating its work in recent months.

“We’re always active, always sharing information. But the era that we’re in now — it’s been a heightened sense of need, of urgency, of hey, this is happening, and we need to do something about it,” she said. “We need to figure out how to band together, how to lift up voices, how to gather health care professionals and folks that care about children’s health to stop these practices because they’re so harmful to children.”

Shah added that she’s not surprised that pediatricians are leading organic advocacy efforts.

“It is something that is deeply woven into the fabric of who pediatricians are,” she said. “We have a deep understanding of the range of factors that affect children and their families.”

Over the past few weeks, the trio of doctors began drafting and circulating a letter, which was later signed by thousands of medical professionals, to be sent to DHS officials and several key senators with roles in immigration enforcement oversight. , dated February 26, alleges unsanitary detention conditions and inadequate access to food and clean water. It also expresses concerns of a measles outbreak within the Dilley facility. Infants are typically too young to be vaccinated against measles.

Kristi Noem’s ouster as head of DHS last Wednesday doesn’t alter the demand for accountability, said Cozzo.

“I actually don’t necessarily think that changing the face changes anything, because it’s just a complete system that is broken,” she said.

All three agreed that the letter is a start.

“This letter is day one of a marathon,” said Patel, who was a guest of Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro at the recent State of the Union address, with the goal of elevating the issue. “The point of the letter was to clearly and succinctly as possible, dictate what has been documented as known medical negligence or medical harm or human rights violations.”

They want to grow public pressure while helping as many children and their families as possible. Jones said their advocacy is about the health and well-being of children. She doesn’t see that as political.

“This is an issue about child welfare,” she said. “I feel like if we can continue to stand our ground about the fact that we are causing preventable, measurable, well-studied, predictable harm to children that is not justified. There’s no context in which that is justified, and so I think we just have to continue to get that message across — to the public, to lawmakers. There will be challenges at every step of the way, no doubt, but I think the truth and what’s right is on our side.”

A bill requiring Tennessee public schools to gather data on student immigration status and report it to the state education department advanced out of a House legislative committee Tuesday.

The bill () was introduced last year as part of a Republican effort to challenge Supreme Court precedent requiring public schools to enroll all children regardless of immigration status. As originally introduced,Ìę the bill would have allowed Tennessee public school districts to refuse to enroll immigrant students who could not provide proof of legal status – or charge their families tuition.

But the controversial measure stalled, in part due to concerns it could jeopardize more than $1.1 billion in federal education funding.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican who sponsored the measure, told a legislative committee Tuesday the bill in its amended form is now “literally a data bill” to give state leaders reliable information on the number of students without legal immigration status enrolled in taxpayer funded schools. Provisions allowing schools to deny enrollment or charge tuition have been stripped from the bill.

But opponents of the measure, among them educators, immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers, have questioned how the data will ultimately be used, how educators untrained in immigration law can reliably review complex immigration documentation and how the specter of being asked to produce immigration paperwork in schools would impact children and families.

Lamberth last week deflected questions about the ultimate use of student immigration data, which the legislation specifies would be reported to the state in aggregate, non-identifying formats.

“We can take whatever action down the road that this body would choose to take,” after the data was gathered, he said then.

A statement Tuesday from Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of TIRRC Votes, raised continued alarms about the ultimate goal of student immigration status data gathering. TIRRC is the political arm of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.

“Across history, we’ve seen the dangers of governments making and keeping lists of the people that they think don’t belong,” the statement said.

“But rather than learn from our past, these power-hungry politicians, desperate for Trump’s approval, are doubling down on their efforts to identify and track immigrant students in the hopes of one day being able to exclude them from our schools.”

The bill is cosponsored by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican. The full senate passed the bill in its original form in April but has yet to take it up in its amended form this year. The House and Senate versions of the bill would have to be reconciled before the legislation could ultimately advance to the governor’s desk.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

If you’ve been following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, you’ve likely heard of Democrats’ calls for greater officer accountability, including banning face masks and mandating body cameras and publicly displayed IDs. For my latest story, I dig into a lesser-known demand: barring federal immigration agents from Head Start, child care and pre-K classrooms.

That was once standard practice but since President Donald Trump rescinded a rule last year shielding so-called sensitive locations from enforcement actions, those who provide education and care to the youngest learners report harrowing encounters with immigration officers. I’m a staff reporter covering for Mark this week and I spoke to several of those folks in Illinois, which was hit with the administration’s Operation Midway Blitz last fall.

In the news

The latest in ongoing FBI investigation into L.A. schools’ failed AI chatbot deal: A January 2023 meeting invite obtained by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ suggests senior staff were consulting with AllHere principals at district headquarters five months before the contract was approved. It also calls into question statements by schools chief Alberto Carvalho that he had no involvement in selecting the company represented by his close friend. | 

• Carvalho issued his first statement after an FBI raid on his home and office. The high-profile school leader, who’s been placed on paid leave, denied any wrongdoing. | 
  
• Sources say grand jury subpoenas have been issued seeking records from the Miami-Dade County Public Schools’s inspector general and a fundraising foundation overseen by Carvalho while he was the Miami superintendent. | 

Kids’ internet safety bill moves to House vote. Despite Democrats’ complaints of a “giant loophole” for Big Tech, a bill requiring online platforms to implement safeguards for minors has advanced to a full House vote. It would provide “easy-to-use parental tools” and limit addictive design features.Ìę|Ìę

A former Lakewood, Colorado, school security supervisor will serve 18 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student on and off school grounds over the course of two years. “His job was to ensure the safety of students,” said a deputy district attorney. “Instead 
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As federal civil rights complaints languish, parents of disabled students look to states. Colorado lawmakers unanimously approved a bill that would expand the state education department’s ability to hear complaints tied to students’ disability accommodations. They’re part of a growing number of legislators nationwide who want their states to step in amid federal staffing cuts and mounting unresolved civil rights cases. | 

• Go deeper: For Decades, the Feds Were the Last, Best Hope for Special Ed Kids. What Happens Now?Ìę|Ìę

Virginia has passed a bill barring schools from teaching Jan. 6 as a “peaceful protest.” Instead, it would be presented as “an unprecedented, violent attack on U.S. democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”  | 

Private school choice but not for everyone. Texas has excluded about two dozen Islamic schools from its new $1 billion voucher program for allegedly being linked to terrorist groups, a decision that has led to a lawsuit and claims of anti-Muslim discrimination.| 

A $7 million tech effort meant to make HawaiÊ»i schools safer by equipping teachers and principals with panic buttons and mobile apps never got off the ground. Two years after launching, only one school in the state has panic buttons — and it’s not using them.| 

ICYMI @The74

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Jebby, my handsome cockapoo, is very excited to hang up his jacket — and his booties — and sniff the spring air. 

That afternoon, agents appeared in front of at least two nearby elementary schools, reportedly waiting for parents to pick up their children, “and at one point they were looking into kindergarten classroom windows and just scaring the living daylights out of the children,” said the director, who asked not to be identified to protect the children she serves. “They have guns, they have rifles. They look scary.”

Helicopters also flew overhead at a circling as kids paraded through the streets in their costumes, according to stories collected from Illinois Head Start families on how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in their state last fall affected them.

Earlier on the 31st, the Illinois director said she had gotten word through phone calls and Signal channels that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had flooded the area, she told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. A family on their way to enroll their young daughter in an early learning center that shares space with her Head Start program was stopped a block or so away at a major intersection. The father was detained in front of his wife and child, she said.

A dozen Head Start associations representing more than 100,000 children across the country, including the one in Illinois, sent a letter to Congress Tuesday demanding that immigration agents be barred from entering Head Start, child care and pre-K classrooms and premises, including parking lots. 

For nearly three decades, that was a largely accepted practice: Immigration enforcement was prohibited in and around schools, hospitals, places of worship and other so-called sensitive locations. 

One of the first things President Donald Trump did at the start of his second term in January 2025 was . Reinstating those constraints is now one of at least meant to rein in ICE enforcement that congressional Democrats say they need in order to support long-term Department of Homeland Security funding and end the partial government shutdown that is

Their conditions were outlined in a signed by the House and Senate Democratic minority leaders, U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, and include more widely publicized rules, such as prohibiting agents from covering their faces with masks and mandating visible displays of identification. 

This week’s entreaty from the Head Start associations echoes those congressional demands. The early learning groups also urged federal lawmakers to ban DHS agents from interfering with school drop-off or pickup at their programs, including at bus stops, citing another incident in Chicago where a father was his two young kids to school. They were left in the back of the car alone.

“Across the country, children are being harmed by immigration enforcement actions,” the letter reads. “Head Start programs report that children are experiencing changes in behavior and exhibiting signs of fear and anxiety. Families are missing work, keeping their children home, and facing housing and food insecurity.”

Last Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill , extending the shutdown and demonstrating they remained firm in their demands.

That same day marked a major change in the department’s increasingly unpopular leadership, with Trump Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. The move followed questions about her handling of department spending as well as mounting criticism around her response to the deadly ICE shootings of two American citizens at protests in Minneapolis earlier this year. 

Trump announced his plan to nominate Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin as her replacement, though his new pick does not seem to signal any planned shift in enforcing the president’s mass deportation agenda. 

‘Safer but not safe’

Policy limiting immigration enforcement near schools, hospitals and churches was formally introduced in the early days of the Clinton administration through a

In the decades since, similar policies have been modified, clarified or codified by presidents from both parties. In 2011, near the end of President Barack Obama’s first term, his administration formally expanded the policy, which was then further clarified under President Joe Biden in 2021.

Trump’s January directive marked a significant departure from these largely bipartisan, long-standing rules, including during his own first term, when DHS issued a saying they would continue to follow sensitive location protocol. 

According to a DHS the policy Trump put forth in his second term was instituted to prevent “criminal aliens — including murders [sic] and rapists” from being “able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.” Some more stringent guardrails have since been reinstated for places of worship, but not for schools or early learning centers.

Providers in Illinois — and across the country — argue this scenario only serves to traumatize children and make their educational spaces less safe.

“We’ve had kids that aren’t coming anymore because they’re too afraid to come to school,” said Kelly Neidel, the executive director of a different Head Start agency in Illinois, which also provides wraparound services to families. “Our food pantry [has] declined. So these people are making a choice 
 to eat or potentially get picked up.”

In April 2025, a number of organizations filed a lawsuit in Oregon, challenging Trump’s new edict and in September, they were joined by , including staff and parents from a preschool.

In February, the country’s two largest teachers unions filed an , citing an incident in Oregon in which agents smashed in the car window of a father dropping his child off at a day care, as well as students and teachers at Minneapolis’s Roosevelt High School being assaulted with tear gas in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good.

While advocates and providers are hopeful that a forthcoming DHS bill will include a reinstatement of sensitive location protections, some argue it wouldn’t go far enough. 

The Illinois Head Start director, who went out patrolling on Halloween to protect families and kids, said now that she’s seen what federal immigration agents are capable of, it would make her feel “safer but not safe.”

“It might deter them from coming, but would it deter all of them?” she asked. “I don’t know. I honestly cannot answer that question. I cannot answer confidently that they would not enter even if that order was in place.”

Wendy Cervantes, a director at The Center for Law and Social Policy, is helping to lead the charge on federal legislation, which would codify sensitive location policies into law, significantly strengthening their power.

, introduced in the House in February 2025, would prohibit immigration enforcement actions within 1,000 feet of such places, except in certain extreme circumstances. If an officer violated these rules, any resulting information wouldn’t be admissible in court and the targeted person could move to terminate any resulting removal proceedings. 

Since early January, the bill has gained 33 co-sponsors in the House and four in the Senate, meaning over two-thirds of the Democratic caucus is officially in support. It has also been endorsed by over across the country. No Republicans have signed on.Ìę

Some states, including Illinois, have passed their own bills over the past year, but because they have to align with federal policy, they’re largely aimed at providing guidance and setting protocols for how local entities should address ICE. 

“It would make a huge difference to have this done at the federal level,” Cervantes said.

‘A horrendous day’

The Illinois director of programs, who funds centers across a metropolitan area in the state, said that from day one of the second Trump administration she felt a significant shift in the federal approach to early childhood learning. In addition to increased ICE enforcement, her Head Start classrooms — along with thousands of others across the nation — experienced delays in funding that threatened to shutter them. 

Once their grant came through, she and her colleagues had to wade through the realities of operating under the administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion ban, which threatened the core of their work, she said.

Things escalated in September after a father of two, was shot and killed during a highly publicized ICE traffic stop in nearby Franklin Park, Illinois. He had just dropped off one of his children at a Head Start classroom.

“We knew they would eventually be coming our way,” she said, and early learning centers across the region began to prepare. 

That reality hit the morning of Oct. 31 — â€œa horrendous day” she said, which filled her with fear and made her cry tears of anger. 

And the fear has not subsided, she said, for the families she serves, the staff she employs or for herself. As the child of immigrants and a woman of color, she’s started carrying her passport.

Mirroring steps taken by other early childhood providers in Illinois, images of fake and real warrants have now been posted at the front doors of her centers so staff can differentiate, along with a script of what to say should an ICE agent approach. Head Start Parent Council meetings have moved to Zoom so parents who fear leaving their homes can still remain involved, and centers have organized food drop-offs. 

Programs have installed incident commanders and some have hired security details. Others have their own staff standing guard, but directors fear for their safety too, since many are immigrants themselves.

In November, ICE agents chased one day care worker into the center where she worked in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood. She was in front of children, and subsequently arrested. She was a week later after a federal judge ruled her arrest was illegal because she wasn’t given a preliminary bond hearing.

Volunteer rapid response teams have formed across Illinois to alert providers of nearby ICE activity. In one incident, they were called to stand guard during a field trip to a children’s museum where ICE was “hot and heavy,” according to Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, the executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, which advocates for all state providers.

“Last fall was terrible,” she said. “I cried every day.” 

“Our ask is keep ICE out of Head Start [and] early Head Start classrooms, facilities, our playgrounds, our parking lots and not interfere in our work or our day-to-day,” she added. “Families need safe spaces to send children 
 making our facilities safe when ICE is surrounding them is really hard.”

Over the past six years, my own children and many young people in Maine have experienced  violence, terror and educational disruption. From the COVID pandemic and its aftermath, to the lockdowns after the Lewiston mass shooting and the regular practice of active shooter drills, many in our community are living on edge. 

Some lockdown drills required the entire kindergarten class to crowd together in the bathroom in their classroom and remain still and silent. Five year olds were trained not to respond to a knock on the door, and to only come out when they heard an announcement over the public address system. My son called it “Kansas Clover,” which we later learned meant “campus closure.”

Our children and families are already worried about school safety. In the past few months, Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents have made things so much worse. 

In September, immigration officers in a Portland ’s driveway arrested a parent who had just dropped off his child. This sent shock waves throughout the community. It solidified that we in child care needed to raise our voices to protect children and families. We also realized we needed to provide support for child care providers, educators, hospital and health care workers, and people who work for public institutions. Their physical and emotional safety is at risk. 

Further underscored this need, creating widespread fear in our communities. Local schools saw in January because of these concerns.

This fear works its way to impact even the youngest in the community. In my own classroom, we have noticed an increase in stress behaviors during the enhanced ICE occupation, as well as in the days and weeks following the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good amid the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis. Students who do not normally act out have been yelling, crying and throwing tantrums noticeably more.

From church members to family members to families in our child care center, people are noticing a difference. Parents are making emergency communications plans in case ICE creates a disruption that leaves them unable to pick up their child. Schools and students have noticed their classmates stop showing up to school, and do not know where they are.

All children deserve affordable, accessible, high quality education in physically and emotionally safe environments. This cannot happen when officials are deputized to enter sacred spaces, profile, detain or arrest parents, caregivers and young people. Learning and fear cannot coexist. 

This isn’t surprising.

For decades, federal administrations led by Republicans and Democrats prohibited immigration enforcement at sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals. Policies were built on the premise that everyone should be able to access services supporting life and wellbeing without fear. It was common sense that children needed safe spaces where fear would not find them.

Unfortunately, one of the first actions of the current administration was to reverse these policies. They sought to rationalize their actions by pushing harmful and false narratives linking immigrants with criminality. But no one benefits when one group of people is maligned, targeted and pushed to the margins of society. It only hurts the people in our communities.

We need action at every level to respond to these threats and protect our children. Our elected officials can lead through legislation, such as in Maine which would prohibit ICE from entering public schools, child care centers, libraries and hospitals without a valid judicial warrant signed by a judge. 

Local mutual aid groups are working overtime to make sure that affected communities are able to get food, medicine and baby products delivered when the threat of racial profiling by ICE is too great to leave home, regardless of citizenship status. Members of my own community are getting notarized to help create formal arrangements for children in case anything happens to their parents. This kind of action must continue and expand to protect children from future harm.

There’s a lot that we parents can’t control in the world to keep our children safe. However, we have an opportunity to speak up against ICE terrorizing our schools, child care centers and medical facilities. We should act swiftly to do so. Whether you are an educator, a lawmaker or a parent who cares about your community, speak out against ICE. All of us can contribute to the safety and future of our children and our communities.

The apprehensions and removals occurred in a 10-month period between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025, according to figures released by DHS in response to a query from Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.

It reveals for the first time that this group, who were granted protected status during the Obama administration and whose fate has been the subject of ongoing litigation, have been swept up by President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement. 

It’s unclear whether more have been detained or deported since November, a period of time that saw immigration sweeps in Charlotte, North Carolina, New Orleans and Minneapolis.

DACA recipients took a chance when they registered their biometric data with the government starting in 2012 as part of the application process. Immigrant advocates say they are sickened to see this information used against them in a campaign that has brought chaos, terror and, in some cases, death, to U.S. cities.

“As someone who worked in those early days of the DACA program to ease fears and encourage youth to apply, it breaks my heart to see the trust they put into the process betrayed more than a decade later,” said Wendy Cervantes, a director at The Center for Law and Social Policy. “It’s simply wrong, like setting a trap for young people who have grown up here and have done everything possible to be able to remain in the country they call home.”

DACA recipients are lawfully present in the United States during the period of deferred action and also receive work authorization, although this right is . In multiple states, DACA recipients have under the Affordable Care Act — and in some places no longer qualify for

Nearly had obtained lawful permanent resident status as of March 31, 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. Some have DACA status. There were active DACA recipients as of December 31, 2024. 

Alejandra VĂĄzquez Baur, a fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, called the government’s targeting of DACA recipients shameful, saying it reflects a greater, solvable problem.  

“It underscores the importance of providing a path to citizenship for DACA recipients as their protections were temporary and insufficient in the first place,” she said. “Immigrants — all immigrants — deserve dignity. Congress can and must restore that dignity to the system in the face of such abuses of power as we’ve seen in the last year under this administration.”

including Trump, who has . Yet a path to citizenship remains elusive for this group. Last summer, DHS urged DACA recipients to . 

Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a DACA recipient and deputy director of federal advocacy for United We Dream, said the government’s reversal is devastating. 

“This is obviously unacceptable, unconscionable and a betrayal of the promises made by the U.S. government,” she said. “DACA is a lawful program that does provide legal protection from detention and deportation which has been , no matter what this current administration says.” 

DHS, in its to Durbin, said that of the 261 DACA recipients arrested, 241 had “criminal histories.” Trump has said he is targeting “the worst of the worst” for deportation, but records show less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in his first year back in office had

DHS said, too, in its letter, that DACA does not offer protection from deportation.  

“DACA, like all forms of deferred action, is a temporary forbearance from removal within the authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security,” the letter states. “It comes with no right or entitlement to remain in the United States indefinitely. Aliens with certain criminal histories will not be considered for DACA. Further, those who violate the terms are also subject to termination and removal.”

But immigrant advocates say the government is not acting in good faith. 

“There is a process to rescind DACA status but this government is not going through that,” said Macedo do Nascimento. “No matter what that number is, any detention and deportation of DACA recipients on valid status is unlawful.” 

The crackdown comes as the government is failing to meet its promise of deporting millions quickly. Immigration agents are struggling to satisfy a stated goal of . 

The United States was home to in 2023, of whom were undocumented, according to Pew Research. 

Records show live in California, 17% in Texas, 5% in Illinois and 4% in both New York and Florida, with the remainder spread across the country. More than 80% are from Mexico, 4% are from El Salvador and 3% are from Guatemala.

Applicants had to be under 16 at the time of entry into the United States, younger than 31 on June 15, 2012 and either enrolled in school — or have graduated — , among a host of other requirements. They had to submit to background checks, reapply to the program every two years and pay hundreds of dollars in fees to participate. 

The government stopped processing new DACA requests in late 2017. But Cervantes sees another way forward. 

“DACA recipients represent the best of us: they are teachers, doctors, business owners, and leaders in their communities,” she said. “Many are parents who have built a life here, with more than a quarter of a million U.S. citizen children with at least one parent with DACA. The success of the DACA program has proven what is possible when policymakers choose humanity and opportunity over hate and cruelty.”