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. 

The decision came just a day after another U.S. district court judge in Rhode Island granted a that offered similar protections to preschoolers That ruling also means undocumented residents can still access adult and career and technical education and won’t be cut off from a range of federally funded emergency services, including for domestic violence and homelessness.

Linda Morris, an ACLU attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Washington state case, said she was elated by the decision, noting its sweeping scope. 

“This is an incredible victory, especially for Head Start providers and Head Start children and families,” she said. “Today’s ruling makes clear that every child, no matter their immigration status, deserves access to early educational support. We are extremely pleased with the court’s decision.” 

In issuing the national injunction, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez strongly rebuked the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees Head Start and funds 80% of its costs, for changing a longstanding legal interpretation and classifying it for the first time as a federal public benefit. 

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for these supports, including food assistance and non-emergency Medicaid. The move to restrict Head Start access is part of a wider Trump administration effort to exclude the undocumented from all taxpayer-funded services and programs, including several that involve education and job training.

The ruling restores Head Start eligibility to children and families who have student visas and other temporary statuses and were also excluded by HHS’s . The move affected the eligibility of more than 500,000 kids, according to the agency’s own analysis, and impacted approximately 115,000 children currently enrolled in the program.

Andrew Nixon, the HHS communications director, said Friday his office disagrees with the injunctions and is evaluating next steps. 

Head Start associations from four states and two parent and caregiver groups sued the agency and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Washington case. 

Joel Ryan is executive director of one of , the.

“I feel relief. I feel like people can breathe a little bit more,” said Ryan, whose organization’s other legal claims against the administration are focused on confusion over its anti-diversity, equity and inclusion mandates and the mass firings of Head Start staff.

Martinez rejected the Trump administration’s assertion that Head Start is a welfare program because it provides other means of support, including meals. Public schools do the same and no one would argue they are not educational in nature, he wrote. 

“Providing services such as health care, nutrition and other social services does not make Head Start non-educational but, as the Head Start Act states, ‘promotes the school readiness of low-income children by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development,’” he wrote, noting, too, that Head Start funds do not provide payments of benefits to individual households or families. 

In court Tuesday, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Micheal Velchik tried to parse the degree of learning and instruction that takes place in Head Start from what’s taught at the K-12 level.Ìę

“It’s technically not school or education because it’s preschool. It’s what you do before school and so it’s not really education in that sense,” said Velchik, who mistakenly referred to the program as Head First several times.

Jannesa Calvo-Friedman, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said undocumented parents, families of mixed immigration status and others with full legal standing but who lack documentation told Head Start operators they were keeping their kids away out of fear or confusion.

“The children who are losing education at this time [in their lives] can never get it back,” Calvo-Friedman said, citing studies on the critical nature of early learning. “Unless the directive is stayed or enjoined, defendants will continue to communicate the message that immigrant families need not apply.”

Martinez agreed that allowing the directive to go into effect while the underlying case was being argued would impose imminent and irreparable harm.

“While actual loss of funding from under enrollment might be down the road, families losing access to Head Start due to the Directive’s unclear guidance and chilling effects appears anything but speculative and exists even prior to enforcement,” he notes.  

The judge expressed disbelief at the government’s contention that implementing the restriction immediately would discourage illegal immigration.

“The Court is floored by this argument,” he wrote. “Nothing on the record provides any means for this Court to infer that access to Head Start ‘incentivizes’ illegal immigration.”

Head Start was established in 1965 to help improve kindergarten readiness for low-income children and to support their families. It has served young learners  and their families in the 60 years since. 

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .

For 60 years, Head Start has provided child care for the most vulnerable children in the United States with little controversy.

It was established by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1965, and supported by a since, including Richard Nixon, who called it ; Ronald Reagan, who established ; and George H. W. Bush, who . Legislators from both parties have supported Head Start, which operates in all 50 states, and is the only child care option available in some rural parts of the country.

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This year, though, politics came to the door of Head Start. Caught in the political crosshairs of the Trump administration, the program is facing unprecedented upheaval that could shutter child care centers and, as many of Head Start experts who spoke to The 19th see it, fundamentally alter the program.

“For me and for a lot of other directors, trust has been deeply broken,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 17 child care centers in Wisconsin and offers Head Start services. “The mission is we serve the neediest of the needy and poorest of the poor. For us, changing that would violate the mission of Head Start.”

The program, which now serves about , was created to support low-income families. It provides free child care to children ages 3 to 5 (Early Head Start serves those under 3) and offers a wide array of services for the entire family, including prenatal support, health screenings and connecting parents to job training, housing and food assistance.

But the Trump administration has dealt several financial blows to the program this year. At one point, it looked like Head Start may be .

And more recently, the future of Head Start has been thrown into uncertainty by an unprecedented directive from the administration: Programs are to ban undocumented children from Head Start entirely.

Attorneys general in have sued the federal government over this rule, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has agreed to halt enforcement in those states until September 11. As programs wait for additional guidance on whether they will have to implement that change, the mood is one of unease, confusion and fear, according to interviews with nearly two dozen Head Start experts across the country, including providers, state association directors and federal workers.

There’s a discomfort over just how much the politics of the moment has reached their programs. They don’t want to say anything that could turn D.C.’s attention on them.

At the same time, they are trying to continue to serve Head Start families, knowing that soon, some of them could be barred from it. Because the work they do is so deeply connected with the populations the Trump administration is targeting, they are now weighing a moral dilemma: If Head Start changed, could they stay?

“We would have staff say, ‘I don’t want to work in a program that has this eligibility criteria.’ And I would understand that,” Bailey said.

Already, her centers are seeing dips in attendance from families in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid as they bring their kids in. About undocumented people live in Wisconsin, according to the Migration Policy Institute; Reach Dane’s centers serve some 1,000 children.

Bailey told her staff that although the political rhetoric has changed, their core values have not. Reach Dane is not making any changes until more guidance arrives from Washington. But if they were forced to check for immigration status, she’s not sure she could stay.

“If it came to the point where it could not take care of staff and kids and families at some sort of basic level, I wouldn’t be able to ethically sit in that space,” said Bailey, who has worked in Head Start for 25 years.

Project 2025, the 900-page document from the conservative Heritage Foundation that has turned into a for President Donald Trump’s second term, dedicates one paragraph to Head Start. Citing “rampant abuse” of children and “lack of positive outcomes,” advising: Eliminate Head Start.

While there have been documented cases of , it still has one of the most rigorous safety standards in American child care (the incidents affected fewer than 1 in 1,000 children, according to the Administration for Children and Families, the division that oversees Head Start), and the issues are . Numerous studies have also found positive outcomes both in the and for children enrolled in the program.

In April, a leaked White House budget showed the Trump administration was angling to , claiming it used a “radical” curriculum that gave preference to undocumented children and embraced diversity, equity and inclusion. In response, the National Head Start Association sent an to the president signed by 50,000 Head Start parents and alumni.

The letter-writing campaign would grow to number nearly 500,000, and state Head Start associations also mobilized to speak out against the program’s elimination. Ultimately, it worked. Head Start received flat funding from Congress — what amounts to a budget cut when accounting for inflation.

Still, the programs have taken economic hits —Ìęin some cases, ones they could barely recover from. Shortly after Trump took office at the end of January, funding to programs was cut off as part of a government-wide freeze. serving nearly 20,000 children across 23 states spent days and weeks waiting for money to come down. The true number is likely much higher, experts said.

April Mullins-Datko, the Head Start director at ADVOCAP, a community action agency in Wisconsin that provides Head Start services, said her funding was delayed for more than a month. They used some reserve funds and took out a line credit to stay open.

“We were limping. Robbing Peter and paying Paul,” said Mullins-Datko, a 20-year Head Start veteran who was a Head Start child herself in the 1980s. Her twins also went through the program.

A Government Accountability Office report found that the Trump administration violated federal law when it withheld funds from programs that had already been approved by Congress. Between January 20 and April 15, Head Start grantees received $825 million less in funding when compared to the same period in 2024.

Another headwind arrived in April. Five of the 10 regional offices that support Head Start and other child care programs suddenly closed as part of a reduction of the federal workforce. All were . Programs in lost specialists who helped them navigate challenges with funding, who served as the first points of contact if a safety incident occurred. The remaining offices, which were already shortstaffed, took on entire states’ caseloads.

Katie Hamm, who oversaw the Head Start program in her role as the deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development for the Biden administration, called it “a game of whack-a-mole, where you think you solved a new issue and here comes another one.” Hamm left the role in January 2025.

But what has really rattled Head Start is the change on immigration. Since the on undocumented children was issued in July, programs have been in something of a holding pattern.

Fundamentally, the guidance redefines Head Start and other HHS programs as a “federal public benefit,” or in other words, welfare. Head Start has never been defined as a form of welfare, said Allison Siebeneck, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, one of the groups suing the federal government over the changes to Head Start. Welfare reform in the 1990s specifically excluded K-12 and early childhood from the definition of a “federal public benefit,” she said: “They could have included it, and they didn’t.”

Redefining Head Start means only U.S. citizens or “qualified aliens” can access the program, excluding undocumented children but also those who are seeking asylum, those with U visas such as victims of serious crimes, those with temporary protected status and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

When the Trump administration published its rule change, it that undocumented immigrants “should not burden” our benefits system. The change was effective immediately.

The new rules came with no additional information on how programs are to screen families. Programs are still waiting for implementation guidance from the federal Office of Head Start. Thousands of teachers, parents and Head Start alumni, meanwhile, have in the federal registrar responding to the change, many of them condemning it.

The rule change does include an exemption for nonprofits that offer Head Start services, which is about 70 percent of all programs, but the administration noted that all programs, regardless of the exemption, are encouraged to and screen students for immigration status. Siebeneck called it a “thinly veiled threat.”

“You have one statute that says you’re exempt,” she said, “but when you go to sign for your grant you also have to sign a certification saying you’re in compliance with federal law.”

Program directors, who already saw what it was like to suddenly lose funding earlier in the year, are now afraid to lose their grants altogether if they don’t comply with the requirement. Some may comply before exact guidance is released or regardless of nonprofit status.

In Illinois, Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association, said one Head Start director has decided not to enroll children if they find out the family is undocumented.

“They don’t want to do something that gets them in trouble. Our programs follow the rules,” Morrison-Frichtl said. “They are not rule breakers.”

“It’s an odd moment that what we’ve always been doing has now turned into the politics of the moment,” reflected Mullins-Datko, the Head Start program director in Wisconsin. “We can usually find common ground with our children no matter what our politics are because typically we all want the same things for our children: We want them to thrive, we want them to be healthy, we want them to get a good education — that’s why Head Start has enjoyed bipartisan support throughout its history.”

Many Head Start providers would love to return to a time when Head Start wasn’t political, when their primary concern was how to better serve the families and children in their care with the resources they had. Others feel like the mission of Head Start — to protect those most in need — has moved them to speak up at a time when those communities are being targeted.

“Head Start has been around for 11 administrations and 60 years and have never seen these types of asks of us changing our approach to eligibility and enrollment, despite Congress having a lot of opportunities to do that,” said Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association.

The national group is in touch with members across both sides of the aisle who support Head Start. , Sheridan said, has expressed support for the program, saying in May that he would if programs shut their doors and adding that he “fought very hard to make sure Head Start gets all of its funding next year.” Nevertheless, the changes to Head Start have taken place under Kennedy’s leadership at HHS.

It’s now a matter of, “How do we move Head Start out of the way of politics?” Sheridan said.

In Indiana, Rhett Cecil, the head of the state’s Head Start Association, is also trying to keep the conversation nonpartisan.

“There’s no agenda in Head Start,” he said.“I find it remarkably refreshing in a polarized society.”

Cecil is waiting for guidance on implementing the immigration change from the federal Office of Head Start, but said it’s not something his members have thought through much yet. “Our programs will adhere to the standards of Head Start,” he said. About undocumented immigrants live in Indiana, putting it in the middle of the pack among states in terms of population.

“Here’s what’s changed in Indiana,” Cecil said: “Nothing.”

Megan Woller, the executive director of the Idaho Head Start Association, said providers in her state are worried about scaring families away and bringing too much attention to Head Start.

“Idaho is a political climate that is right in line with the Trump administration. My state association colleagues across the country who all live in different political climates are advocating in very vocal ways and are banding together,” Woller said. “My members have not wanted to do that. There is a fear of being too vocal and causing a big stink and putting too much focus on Head Start.”

But in other parts of the country, programs have been moved to speak up. Four Head Start state associations and two parent organizations are named plaintiffs in the against the Trump administration. All are blue or purple states — Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Oregon and California.

In more conservative states, few programs and Head Start Associations were willing to speak to The 19th about this year’s changes. But for some in red states the immigration directive feels like a step too far.

Julie Stone, who leads the Ohio Head Start Association, said the immigration change represents a fundamental shift for programs.

“We are about meeting families where they are. We are about doing what’s right for children,” Stone said. “We’ve never been required to establish their status, but we know their parents are working and we know we have them in a safe and nourishing environment.”

And ICE enforcement is only ramping up. The agency’s annual budget is set to . That makes her anxious, “knowing there will be more enforcement and we are somehow 
 getting wrapped up in this,” Stone said.

Multiple programs and state Head Start agencies told The 19th that the political rhetoric around immigration is distorting the reality of who the families who rely on Head Start are, what they contribute to their communities and why the program is needed.

“What I know to be true about Head Start: The majority of [the families] go to work,” said Jennie Mauer, the head of the Wisconsin Head Start Association. Many of those undocumented families in her state work in the dairy industry, which relies on migrant workers to operate. Those workers, an estimated of the dairy workforce, need somewhere to put their children.

Otherwise, how will the Dairy State continue to be the Dairy State?

“We can have all that [political] rhetoric, but I want safe communities and I want safe children,” Mauer said. “I do not believe that coming to Head Start and putting these questions to families who are just trying to go to work is the way to do it.”

In Detroit, this year of upheaval has already led to the closure of a Head Start program, leaving 324 children without child care.

The center, called Focus: HOPE, had been receiving Head Start funding as part of a consortium of three programs. Last year, the consortium disbanded and each program applied individually. CEO Portia Roberson said her program tried to put together a grant application that aligned with the priorities of the new administration, noting that it served “all” children.

They were supposed to hear back about their grant in March, but nothing came. Michigan was one of the states that lost its regional office in April, meaning the staff that ensured grants were evenly spaced so communities didn’t lose Head Start services were gone.

By July 31, still not having heard anything, the money ran dry. Focus: HOPE laid off nearly 100 staff members and of their Head Start services. Roberson expected parents to be angry with her. But instead, she said, “they were here to figure out how they could support what we are doing and to let people know how important we are for their families.”

In mid-August, the program learned its grant application had been denied. No explanation was given at first — they later learned that one of the providers in the consortium, Starfish Family Services, had received the funding Focus: HOPE expected to go to them.

“The current administration talks about wanting to build a workforce. My question is how do parents become a part of this workforce if there is no safe and educational place to put their children?” she said. Now, “I’m taking people out of the workforce.”

Roberson is hoping Starfish will take them back in as a subgrantee, which will allow her to service the families in their care. If that happens, she will then have to consider what those services would look like with the new immigration changes.

“What gets lost in all of this is we are just trying to help people who need help. We are not making decisions around race or class or political party,” she said. “

She doesn’t know how she could enforce the immigration directive. If it came down to protecting children from being removed, Roberson said, Focus: HOPE would do “whatever needs to be done.”

In a battle over  â€” and, frankly, their futures — the Trump administration agreed this week to pause new federal rules designed to bar immigrants from Head Start and other education programs. 

My colleague Jo Napolitano reports the reprieve, through Sept. 3, applies in 20 states and Washington, D.C., after state attorneys general  designed to give undocumented preschoolers and other immigrant students the boot.

Those regulations could end up restricting educational opportunities for the youngest learners. But as Jo explains in her newest analysis, it’s just one part of a multifaceted approach to bar undocumented students from learning from cradle to career.Ìę

—Ìęand learn how the changes could undercut the chance immigrant youth get for a better life.Ìę

In the news

More on Trump’s immigration crackdown: In Arizona, unaccompanied minors are facing immigration judges alone — without help from lawyers — after the administration cut off access to funding for their defense. A court order has restored the money temporarily through September. | 

• The Trump administration instructed federal agents to give detained migrant teenagers the option of voluntarily returning to their home countries instead of being confined in government-overseen shelters. |Ìę
• Attorneys for immigrant children say youth and families are being detained in “prison-like” facilities even as the administration seeks to terminate rules that mandate basic safety and sanitary conditions for children. |Ìę
• The Denver school district says fear of federal immigration enforcement led to a surge in student absences. A review of attendance data by The Denver Gazette suggests a more nuanced picture. |Ìę
• Undocumented students who attended K-12 schools in the U.S. last year before getting deported share their stories. |Ìę

Penny Schwinn, who was in line to be the Education Department’s second in command, has dropped out of consideration following critiques of her conservative bona fides, including for past support of campus equity initiatives. |Ìę

‘Trampling upon women’s rights’:ÌęThe Oregon Department of Education is the latest agency to come under federal investigation over allegations the state allows transgender students to compete in women’s sports. |Ìę

New Education Department guidance encourages the use of federal money to expand artificial intelligence in classrooms, which the agency said has “the potential to revolutionize” schools. |ÌęÌę

• The Trump administration’s “AI Action Plan” comes after the Senate failed to pass rules in the “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill designed to prevent states from regulating AI. Instead, Trump’s guidance directs the Federal Communications Commission to evaluate state regulations and block any “AI-related federal funding” to any states with rules deemed “burdensome.” |Ìę

How a 45-second TikTok video portraying a campus shooting — created by middle school cheerleaders —Ìęled to criminal charges. |Ìę

A phishing campaign has taken advantage of mass layoffs at the Education Department by mimicking a portal maintained by the agency to manage grants and federal education funding. |Ìę

Drones are being pitched as the next big thing to thwart school shootings — but district leaders are balking at the million-dollar price tag. |Ìę

‘Critical gaps’:ÌęAn inspector general report in Washington, D.C., uncovered flaws in the city school system’s gun violence prevention efforts, including a backlog on repairs to security equipment. |Ìę

Wisconsin schools are installing controversial license plate readers that have beenÌęused by law enforcementÌęto track down undocumented immigrants. |Ìę

ICYMI @The74

Emotional Support

Chompers gonna chomp.ÌęPhoto credit: 

On July 4, Nory Sontay Ramos stepped off a flight from San Antonio into a country she hardly recognized: Guatemala.

The summer wasn’t supposed to start this way. The 17-year-old had plans. In early June, she wrapped up 11th grade on a high note, having made the honor roll and represented her Los Angeles high school in the city finals for track. With track season over, she turned her attention to cross-country, showing up to campus for practice after the school year ended.

Everything changed when she and her mother, Estela Ramos — both undocumented — appeared at what they thought was a standard check-in visit with immigration officials on June 30.

“ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, ‘Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,’” Sontay Ramos told The 19th. Over the objections of their attorney, federal agents led them away.

The next day, she and her mother were shipped to Texas. And by July 4, they were on a plane to Guatemala, a country where neither of them have lived for over a decade. On Independence Day — an occasion associated with freedom, with hope — their American dream shattered. Sontay Ramos has no idea what will become of the friends, family members and school community her deportation forced her to leave behind in Los Angeles.

A lawyer hired after she and her mother were detained said Monday that a motion to reopen the case has been filed with the Board of Immigration Appeals but provided no other information to The 19th.

A year shy of becoming a high school graduate in the United States, the teen’s life — and opportunities — completely changed in the span of five days.

“I’m confused,” Sontay Ramos said, her voice breaking. “I don’t know. I’m just really sad about everything.”

President Donald Trump campaigned for a return to office with the promise of mass deportations, characterizing undocumented immigrants as criminals and threats to women and girls. But as his administration has ramped up enforcement of his policy priority, undocumented people with no criminal backgrounds have made up the largest share of immigrants targeted. Those who are pursuing legal status through the proper channels have also become vulnerable — showing up to check-ins, like Sontay Ramos and her mother — only to be detained. These developments, recent polls reveal, have led to public disapproval of the Trump administration’s strategies.

Civil liberties and advocacy groups have raised concerns that undocumented immigrants are being removed so quickly they have been denied the right to . With Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act directing $150 billion more toward mass deportations, expedited removals of undocumented immigrants will almost certainly increase — and those like Sontay Ramos stand to get caught in the middle.

The Trump administration deported more than 93,800 people from January 20 to June 11, with compared with the same period in 2024, revealed an analysis by the Washington Post based on information from the Deportation Data Project. (The data does not reflect arrest and removal numbers from Customs and Border Protection.) Of those, 61 percent did not have criminal records and almost 90 percent were men, underscoring how relatively uncommon it is for a mother and daughter to be removed.

The Trump administration has not provided a tally of how many minors have been deported this year, but The 19th’s found that only about 3 percent of removals involved children. When ICE targets juveniles, the incidents often make national headlines, such as when living in Torrance, California, were detained in May and swiftly deported to Honduras. In states including Michigan, Massachusetts and New York, the detainment of teenagers, including those who are technically legal adults, have also this year.

But when Sontay Ramos and her mother exited their Guatemala-bound flight on Friday, they weren’t met with fanfare. None of their family members in the Central American nation knew to expect them. With the help of an internet connection, they managed to contact one of Sontay Ramos’ older sisters, with whom they’re now living. The teenager isn’t sure which part of Guatemala she’s in, though she describes the area as rural. In fact, a family member told The 19th, she’s in the Guatemalan department of TotonicapĂĄn, in the western highlands.

Just 6 when she left Guatemala, Sontay Ramos struggles to recall what life there was like. But she remembers the emotion she felt as a small child: fear.

“I was scared because there’s gangsters here, and they tried to kill my mom,” she said. A family member involved in a gang threatened her mother, once attacking her so badly she needed to be hospitalized, she said. “My mom was scared.”

A study exploring the from 2012 to 2019 found violence, poverty, climate change and corruption to be among the driving factors and that many such migrants hail from rural parts of the country.

“The two major reasons, especially if we look at families, have to do with violence and drought,” said David Leblang, a coauthor of that study and politics professor at the University of Virginia. “It has been drought and then flood, hurricane and then drought that has just decreased the ability for families to put food on the table, so you see a combination of economic insecurity, but more so for families, food insecurity — because when you can’t feed your kids, that’s when families are going to pick up and they’re going to move first to more urban areas and then out of the country.”

About 11 years ago, Sontay Ramos and her mother headed by car to the United States in search of safety and opportunity. There, other family members awaited them and they hoped to be granted asylum, she said.

The transition was not easy. They left behind three of Sontay Ramos’ older siblings who did not want to come to the United States, she said. Her father remained in Guatemala, too. His death from illness shortly after she moved away was devastating.

“Unfortunately, her dad passed away at a young age, just like two weeks after her arrival to the States,” recalled Jennifer Ramos, Sontay Ramos’ 22-year-old cousin who lives in Los Angeles. “She grew up with her dad, so that also hit her at such a young age, just coming to a new country at 6 years old and not knowing the language here and losing her father. It was definitely hard for her.”

Getting accustomed to life in Los Angeles also wasn’t easy. Sontay Ramos and her mother are Indigenous Guatemalans, fluent in K’iche’. made assimilation more challenging in a city where English and Spanish are the primary languages.

Jennifer Ramos helped her little cousin learn to speak English. “She would come over, and I would help her with her homework. When she first came to the States, my younger sister was kind of her only friend in school because she didn’t know anybody and, again, the language barrier. She actually does struggle speaking Spanish.”

In time, Sontay Ramos and her mother adjusted to life in California. Her mother ultimately became a garment worker, employed as a seamstress until physical setbacks — illness and surgery — sidelined her earlier this year. Her deportation has separated her from her life partner, with whom she and her daughter shared an apartment in the Westlake District of Los Angeles, the neighborhood , and days of demonstrations in nearby downtown escalated after Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines.

Los Angeles is a deeply blue city in a liberal state, with the nation’s highest concentration of immigrants — a place that the president has made ground zero for his immigration raids. In November, the city council voted unanimously to make L.A. a sanctuary city, which bars it from using resources for immigration enforcement. Last week, the Trump administration filed suit, . Meanwhile, advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Counsel are suing the Trump administration for what it describes as a .

Before Trump’s immigration policies roiled her neighborhood and upended her life, Sontay Ramos was indistinguishable from her peers born in the United States. She grew up on the Netflix shows “Stranger Things” and “Cobra Kai,” enjoys the music of Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd and dotes on her cat, Max, who turned 1 on May 15. He is black — one of her two favorite colors. In her spare time, Sontay Ramos practices taekwondo, which she’s been learning for nearly four years.

“I just liked it,” she said of the martial art. Knowing how to fight, she added, helps her feel protected.

Sontay Ramos never sensed she was in danger before the immigration check-in that would push her out of the United States.

But her cousin Jennifer Ramos worried. The night before, Ramos’ father invited the family over to have Sunday dinner with his wife and three daughters. The evening was largely festive. Her father made shrimp ceviche and was eager for his family to enjoy the tangy, citrusy dish — especially Estela Ramos, who had just celebrated her 45th birthday. But when Estela mentioned that she and her daughter had an immigration check-in scheduled, everyone fell quiet.

“We were kind of scared,” Jennifer Ramos said. “We were like, ‘Are you sure you should go?’”

But her aunt tried to reassure them by letting them know their lawyer said it would be fine. After all, they had shown up for previous check-ins without incident, and if they didn’t appear, immigration officials would just find them at home.

Now, Jennifer Ramos doesn’t know when she’ll see her aunt and cousin again.

“It is unfair that a young student like her has been detained,” she said. “She’s the most deserving person. This should be the least of her worries.”

Sontay Ramos couldn’t help but tear up when she described what she was looking forward to about senior year — graduation, her friends, track-and-field and cross-country.

Although excited to reunite with family members they hadn’t seen in years, she and her mother have been weeping off and on since they arrived in Guatemala.

“I was happy, but I was expecting to see them in another way,” she said of her relatives. “Not like this.”

Sleeping and eating have been tough as has the constant feeling of disorientation. She doesn’t know where she is. In K’iche’, she asked her mother for the name of the town they’re in, but it didn’t register.

She also continues to feel blindsided about why she and her mother were deported at all. She doesn’t understand how or why their case was closed.

Recent polls, particularly those conducted after the immigration raids in Los Angeles, reveal that the Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdowns may be unpopular with the majority of the public. A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released July 1 found that .

Sixty-four percent of registered voters support giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, with 31 percent preferring deportation for most of them, released June 26. Six months ago, only 55 percent of voters supported giving unauthorized immigrants a path to legal status, while 36 percent backed deportation.

Leblang, the politics professor, said that ultimately the economy will sway the public to take a stand on immigration.

“All of those people who are being deported, they’re consuming goods that are produced by natives,” he said. “So, what the evidence suggests is that’s going to affect native workers’ wages, so across the board, this is going to have a negative effect on the economy.”

For Manuel Guevara — a physical education teacher and coach at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, where Sontay Ramos is enrolled as a student — immigration isn’t an economic issue but a personal one. He came to the United States at 11 months old in the mid-1980s during El Salvador’s horrific 12-year civil war, becoming a citizen as a teenager. He fears that more deportations of youth from his school are imminent. He knows some families skipped school graduations in the area due to their concerns over raids. Some are so worried they refuse to let their children attend football practice. He’s heard that other families intend to self deport.

“This is not normal,” Guevara said. “Our whole community is beyond vulnerable. A lot of [students’] parents, sad to say, don’t know how to read and write. Their kids need to do that for them. If they’re presented with [immigration] paperwork, they might not even be able to read it because that’s not their primary language.”

He can hardly believe that Sontay Ramos, whom he taught for most of her high school years, is gone.

“She was smiling, happy-go-lucky,” Guevara said. He’s astounded that she was detained and deported in less than a week. “Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that’s just killing me. She was going into her senior year with all this momentum.”

Guevara fondly recalled the teen’s high-pitched voice that gets even higher when she’s excited.

“You could tell when she’s coming from down the hallway, for sure,” he said. But her trademark voice is now subdued due to her deportation ordeal. Through tears, she expressed gratitude for how her teachers, classmates and other supporters have donated nearly $7,000 to her campaign.

“I just want to thank everybody for the support and tell them to just be safe out there and be strong no matter what’s going to happen,” she said.

If she can’t return to the United States, she will figure out how to finish her education in Guatemala.

Guevara is certain Sontay Ramos has the aptitude for greatness. Her academics and extracurricular activities are just hints of what she’s capable of, he said.

“She was about to reach cruising altitude,” he said. “Some of our students are capable of reaching the clouds up there and doing some great things. And I really believe that she was on her way.”

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of . .

Texas is asking public colleges and universities to identify which of their students are living in the country illegally so they can start paying out-of-state tuition, as required by a court ruling earlier this month.

In a to college presidents last week, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Commissioner Wynn Rosser said undocumented students who have been paying in-state tuition will need to see tuition adjustments for the fall semester. A spokesperson for the agency said it has no plans to provide further guidance on how schools can go about identifying undocumented students.

“The real lack of legal clarity just leaves institutions again having to come up with their own process,” said Kasey Corpus, the southern policy and advocacy manager of Young Invincibles, a group that advocates for policies that benefit young adults in the state.

Undocumented students who have been living in Texas for some time soon after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state over the Texas Dream Act, a 2001 state law that allowed those students to qualify for the lower tuition rates at public universities. The state quickly asked the court to side with the feds and find that the law was unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor did just that, blocking the law.

It’s unclear if any Texas university already knows which of its students are undocumented. Students do not have to provide proof of citizenship or disclose their Social Security number to apply for college. And colleges rarely track the citizenship status of students who are not here on a visa, said Melanie Gottlieb, the executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“There is not a simple way for an institution to determine if a person is undocumented,” said Gottlieb. “It’s a challenging question.”

The Texas Tribune asked several schools in the state earlier this month whether they collect this information. The University of Houston System said its applicants do not have to share their immigration status. Other schools — including Texas A&M University, Lone Star College, the University of Texas at Dallas and UT-Rio Grande Valley — did not respond to the question. Some said they were still trying to understand the ruling and what it means for their students.

The state already maintains some higher education databases that likely include undocumented students attending Texas schools. The Texas Dream Act required students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents applying for in-state tuition to sign an affidavit saying they would seek lawful permanent residency as soon as they become eligible. Undocumented students have often applied for state financial aid since they do not qualify for federal financial aid.

Gottlieb said getting information from students about their immigration status will likely change the landscape of applying to college. It’s unclear what documentation schools might ask students to provide as proof of immigration status and who will have access to that information. The coordinating board did not respond to a request for comment about how this information will be protected.

Federal privacy law prohibits schools from sharing students’ data, including their immigration status, with federal immigration authorities, said Miriam Feldblum, the executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Those privacy protections cannot be waived on the basis of a students’ undocumented status alone.

Before schools take away a student’s in-state tuition eligibility over their immigration status, the student should also get a chance to appeal in a due process hearing with school officials and explain their circumstances, Feldblum said. For example, their immigration status may have changed without the school’s knowledge, she said.

As schools scramble to figure out what compliance looks like, thousands of students are still wondering what the directive will mean for them.

“That just leaves a lot of students in limbo,” Corpus said. “How are they going to come up with a way to find scholarships or grants or come up with that money to make up the difference if they are going to be held to those rule changes? Or for some students, they might be thinking, Am I going to have to totally just switch schools or drop out?”

Jessica Priest contributed to this report.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Lone Star College, Texas A&M University, University of Texas – Dallas and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Even though Jorge and his younger sister are only two years apart in age, their college experiences are headed in different directions.

They were both motivated and highly engaged high school students in Central Texas. But after graduation, he went to Austin Community College and had to work three jobs to pay for tuition. She enrolled at Texas State University on a full scholarship.

It wasn’t academics or ambition that separated the siblings, but their immigration status. Their parents, seeking economic opportunity, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with Jorge in their arms when he was 1 year old. They had his sister in Austin a short time later.

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This fall, Jorge hoped to finally be on equal footing with her. The 21-year-old had saved enough money to afford tuition at Texas State and had applied to transfer there to study mechanical engineering. His plans depended on having access to in-state tuition, the lower rate that Texas residents pay to attend public colleges and is often half, or even a third, of what out-of-state students are charged.

But the siblings’ path may soon split for good. Last week, state officials agreed to the federal government’s demand to living in Texas.

Jorge is one of thousands of students whose education plans may have been truncated by the ruling. Their aspirations — to become engineers or lawyers, or join other professions — haven’t disappeared. But the road has grown steeper. For some, it may now be out of reach.

The Texas Tribune spoke to four students who were brought into the country when they were young and are weighing what last week’s ruling means for their college plans. They requested anonymity out of fear that being identified publicly could make them or their families a target for deportation.

The students said they had been on high alert for months, fearing that the Texas Dream Act — the 2001 law that allowed undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid — would be repealed this year as anti-immigrant rhetoric soared with the start of a new Trump administration.

Federal officials have set a goal of deporting 1 million undocumented immigrants by the end of this year, and perhaps no state has extended them as much help as Texas. Gov. said the National Guard can now . State lawmakers have from the state’s budget on border security and passed a law this year to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And a proposal to end the Texas Dream Act in the Texas Legislature than it had in a decade.

“This one got further along than I was comfortable with, so I was keeping my eye on it,” Jorge said.

The students were relieved when lawmakers ended this year’s legislative session without repealing the law, but it was short-lived. They hadn’t prepared for the federal government and state officials to turn to the courts to dismantle the long-standing policy.

Schools, many of which had already started summer classes, were also caught off guard and have struggled to answer critical questions: What will happen to students who can’t pay the difference in tuition? Will they be left with debt and no degree?

Students have been trying to find their own answers, with little luck. College access advocates and legal experts say they are still trying to gauge the ruling’s implications and whether it can be challenged.

Soon after the court announced its decision, Jorge’s friends texted him a news article about it.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I stayed up until 3 in the morning just reading everything I could.”

From dream to disappointment

For nearly 24 years, the Texas Dream Act made college more affordable for students like Jorge.

The law extended access to in-state tuition rates to university and college students who are not U.S. citizens but have lived in Texas for three years prior to graduating high school and one year prior to enrolling in college. The law required them to sign an affidavit declaring that they would apply for permanent legal residency as soon as they were able.

About 19,500 students signed an affidavit to qualify for in-state tuition in 2023. That number not only includes students living illegally in the country but also those who are here on visas, such as those whose parents received work permits and reside legally in the U.S. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which tracks the number of affidavit signers, has told lawmakers the agency does not ask students to disclose their immigration status.

Affidavit signers are also eligible to receive state financial aid. Texas GOP senators have expressed concern that those students take an outsized portion of the state aid available, but according to Every Texan, a left-leaning policy research institute, that’s not the case. Affidavit signers received $17.3 million of the $635.2 million — less than 3% — of the aid distributed in 2023, the group found.

The law was not controversial when it was passed. It was seen, , as a common-sense way to boost the economy. Undocumented students contribute more than $80 million annually to the Texas higher education system and fill vacancies in critical sectors like health care, education and technology, according to .

But the Tea Party movement and President Donald Trump have pushed the Republican Party, in Texas and across the country, toward a more nativist stance.

In 2021, Abbott launched a billion-dollar border security initiative called . As part of that effort, he increased the penalty for the state crime of trespassing and directed state troopers . Abbott across the state this week to respond to protests against federal deportation raids, which his office says have devolved into lawlessness in cities like Los Angeles.

Republicans now argue the Texas Dream Act amounted to a subsidy that deprived U.S. citizens of opportunities. Texans for Strong Borders, an influential anti-immigration group, said the law encouraged people to immigrate to the country illegally.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas, arguing the Texas Dream Act “unconstitutionally discriminates against U.S. citizens.” Texas Attorney General , a long-time critic of the law, chose not to defend it in court despite his history of suing past presidential administrations for overstepping their authority and infringing on the state’s rights. A federal judge favored by conservative litigants quickly ruled in favor of the Justice Department and declared the law unconstitutional.

Republicans quickly celebrated the Texas Dream Act’s demise. State Sen. , the chair of the Texas Senate’s education committee and the architect of the state’s diversity, equity and inclusion ban and other sweeping higher education reforms, that he had filed legislation to end in-state tuition for undocumented students multiple times in previous sessions.

“This is a long-overdue win for the rule of law, fiscal responsibility, and Texas taxpayers,” the Conroe Republican said.

to eliminate the policy without giving undocumented students and their supporters a chance to push back. The federal government’s argument that undocumented students are receiving benefits denied to U.S. citizens is false and misleading, said Monica Andrade, an attorney and director of state policy and legal strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.

“In fact, any U.S. citizen who meets the same criteria — such as attending and graduating from a Texas high school — qualifies for in-state tuition. These requirements apply regardless of immigration status,” she said.

For Jorge, the political fights over immigration have always cast a shadow over his college dreams.

He wants work for Engineers Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that helps establish clean water, sanitation and infrastructure in developing countries.

His parents taught him that “everything that we do has to be for the betterment of the world, because it’s simply what we as humans owe one another,” he said. “The idea of not using education to try to improve the world in some way seems a bit, I don’t know, backwards.”

Jorge has paid for school himself, starting out working for his father’s construction company before taking additional jobs as a waiter and a cashier. His schooling has taken longer than usual because sometimes he couldn’t afford to attend full time, even with access to in-state tuition.

“I take pride in the fact that my parents don’t have to worry about me being short on bills for school,” he said, “but when it comes to rent and bills, I am definitely still dependent on my family.”

Jorge said he applied to Texas State not because his sister goes there, but because it was affordable. He could keep costs down by continuing to live with his family and commuting to San Marcos for class.

Without access to in-state tuition rates, he said, Texas State is anything but cheap. According to the university’s website, taking 15 hours in the fall would now cost him an estimated $24,520 in tuition and fees. That’s double what he would have to pay with in-state tuition.

Jorge still hopes the judge’s ruling can be overturned. A group of undocumented students took the first steps in that direction this week by asking the judge to . But legal experts say an appeal is a long shot that will likely take months to resolve.

In the meantime, Jorge has already started looking into whether he can finish his degree at a Mexican university online.

“I’d like to give more back to this country, but if that’s the option in front of me, I can’t say I wouldn’t take it,” he said.

Other undocumented students, even those who have received state financial aid or private scholarships, have also started looking for backup plans.

Aurora, a 26-year-old student at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, is racing to finish her psychology degree. She enrolled in as many classes as possible this summer and fall because she was worried the Legislature would repeal the Texas Dream Act.

“A lot of us were already nervous, because we kind of feared that this was going to happen, but we just didn’t think it would happen so soon,” she said.

TheDream.US, a national organization that awards scholarships to undocumented students going to college, provides roughly $4,000 to Aurora each semester. But she’d be at least $6,000 short if required to pay the out-of-state tuition rate. After the court’s decision, she wondered if she would have to withdraw from her classes for now.

Some students said they felt betrayed.

A.M., a 24-year-old recent Texas A&M University graduate, said he wanted to return to the school to pursue a master’s degree in public service and administration, but paying out-of-state tuition would be too costly for him. He is also reassessing his options.

A.M. lamented that Paxton didn’t defend the state law in court, especially after lawmakers declined to repeal it during this year’s legislative session.

“It provides a lot of undocumented students with opportunities to fill labor shortages here in this state,” he said. “And yet, Paxton kind of turned his back on us, on all of us Texans.”

Colleges face questions

Days after the ruling upended Texas’ tuition policy, state officials and universities still can’t say what happens next, leaving students without much guidance on how to move forward.

Fifteen Democrat state representatives to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board last week asking it to create a first-generation resident tuition rate to allow students who benefited from the Texas Dreamer Act to enroll this fall at a more affordable rate.

“This action would not override statute but would provide a critical bridge until the Legislature can return to address the matter,” reads the letter, which state Rep. , D-Austin, posted on social media.

Friday evening, the agency replied that it does not have the authority to do what the lawmakers proposed.

The Tribune reached out to the nine Texas public universities and colleges with the highest enrollment of affidavit signers and asked them if they would charge those students the higher rate immediately; if students who had already paid in-state tuition rates for summer classes would have to pay the difference; or if students would have any recourse to challenge the higher costs. The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Arlington, the Dallas College District and Houston Community College did not respond.

It’s unclear if any Texas university knows which of their students are undocumented or how they will determine who should now be charged the out-of-state tuition rate. The University of Houston System said it does not require applicants to disclose their immigration status. Other schools — including Texas A&M University, Lone Star College, the University of Texas at Dallas and UT-Rio Grande Valley — did not answer when asked if they do. They said they were still trying to understand the ruling and what it means for their students.

UT-RGV officials acknowledged the ruling’s likely impact on students’ financial plans.

“Our priority and focus are on minimizing disruption to student success consistent with applicable law and helping students navigate this transition with clarity and care,” said Melissa Vasquez, a university spokesperson, in a statement.

College access experts worry colleges could start identifying undocumented students to cut off their access to in-state tuition rates, which could expose them to immigration enforcement.

In addition, they said, the ruling could set the state back on its goal of having 60% of Texans between the ages of 25-34 . As of 2021, only 49% of Texans in that age group had done so, according to the most recent data from the Higher Education Coordinating Board.

“We are hopeful that colleges will do what they can to help students complete the path they started,” said Will Davies, director of policy and research at Breakthrough Central Texas, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students from low-income communities become the first in their family to go to college. “I mean, that’s good for all Texans. No one benefits from forcing students to stop out with existing debt and without the credentials that can help them achieve economic stability.”

Ale, 24, worked hard to graduate from the University of North Texas with a degree in political science, knowing her efforts might not pay off.

She has work authorization and a driver’s license via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was created under the Obama administration and shields some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation. DACA, which is also facing legal challenges, allowed Ale to split her week working four days as a hotel manager and attending classes at the University of North Texas in her remaining time. One semester, she and her parents worked extra hours so she could afford to be an unpaid intern for a politician.

Now, Ale works for a law firm in North Texas that assists international students who, like her, . She wanted to apply to UT-Austin’s law school before she learned last week that the Texas Dream Act was no more.

She said she’s trying to channel the sadness she feels about her situation into motivating her younger sisters, who are U.S. citizens, to never take their educational opportunities for granted. And she still plans to take the LSAT.

“I’m not going to give up on myself,” she said.

Ale isn’t alone in that resolve.

Jorge said he’s going to study Mexican history so he can prepare for the entrance exam at two Mexican universities, TecnolĂłgico de Monterrey and Universidad Nacional AutĂłnoma de MĂ©xico, where he’s considering finishing his degree online.

A.M., who wants to use his education to help reform the country’s health care system, is looking into moving to one of the 23 states that do offer undocumented students in-state tuition rates and paying for his master’s degree there. He feels sad and scared about the possibility of having to move away from his family and friends.

“It’s kind of like having to start from scratch, and all the connections I made here, I might not be able to see for a while,” he said.

Aurora felt hopeful she’ll be able to finish her degree after TheDream.US told her this week she will continue to receive support, even if she decides to transfer to another university.

“I’m still a bit anxious, but at the same time positive because there are people out there who support us,” she said.

All four said they are still trying to reconcile what it means to be raised in Texas and yet be told, in rhetoric and increasingly through law, that they don’t belong.

This article originally appeared in at .The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Students began asking questions soon after President Donald Trump took office.

“How old do I have to be to adopt my siblings?” an area student asked a teacher, worried that their parents could be deported.

“Can I attend school virtually?” asked another student, reasoning that they would be safer from being targeted by immigration agents if they studied online at home.

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A straight-A student from a South American country stunned and saddened her teacher by saying, “So when are they going to send me back?”

“Can I borrow a laminator?”Ìę asked another, who wanted to make a stack of “Know Your Rights” flyers sturdier. High schoolers have been passing the guides out, informing people what to do if stopped and questioned about immigration status.

Trump campaigned on a vow to of undocumented immigrants, boasting of .

What that might mean for the children of targeted immigrants, or whether they would be rounded up, has been the subject of speculation, rumor and fear.

In early March, the Trump administration began at a Texas center, with the intention of deporting the children and adults together.

Kansas City area school districts are responding, training teachers and staff on protocols in case immigration agents try to enter a school and sending notices to parents.

“Not every school district, not every charter school, not every private school, has addressed the issue,” said Christy J. Moreno with Revolución Educativa, a Kansas City nonprofit advocating for .

Parents in some local schools have had their fears calmed through district communication.

“There have been some districts that have been a little bit more public about their stance on this, but in general terms, they’re not being very public,” said Moreno, an advocacy and impact officer. “It’s because of all the executive orders and the fear that federal funding will be taken away.”

Indeed, when asked to comment, most area districts declined or pointed to district policy posted online.

Immigrant children’s right to attend public school, K-12, is constitutionally protected.

A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, , guarantees it regardless of immigration status.

The also ensures that schools do not ask the immigration status of children as they enroll, something that area districts have emphasized in communication to parents.

The Shawnee Mission School District relies on policies that are the responsibility of building administrators if any external agency, such as law enforcement, requests access to or information about a student.

“We strongly believe that every child deserves free and unfettered access to a quality public education, regardless of immigration status,” said David A. Smith, chief communications officer, in a statement. “While we cannot control the actions of others, we can control how we respond.”

Schools were once understood to be off limits for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Schools were considered to be along with hospitals and places of worship.

that nearly 14-year-old policy by executive order immediately upon taking office in January.

In February, the the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, arguing that the schools’ duty to educate students was hindered by the change.

Students were missing school out of fear, the Colorado educators said. And administrators and teachers were forced to redirect resources to train staff on how to react in case immigration agents entered school grounds.

On March 7, a federal judge sided with Homeland Security in denying the injunction.

The ruling gleaned some clarity for schools, with the government noting that the current policy requires “some level of approval on when to conduct an action” in a school.

But that guardrail doesn’t negate anxieties, the judge acknowledged.

In the Kansas City area, one mother, with two children in public school, indicated that her district’s support was too hesitant.

“I know that the districts at this time have not come out in support of immigrant families in these difficult times,” she said. “They are just being very diplomatic, saying that education comes first.”

Plyler v. Doe: Constitutionally protected, but still threatened

isn’t as universally understood as Brown v. Board of Education.

The U.S. Supreme Court case guaranteeing immigrant children’s right to a public K-12 education is a landmark decision, said Rebeca Shackleford, director of federal government relations for , a national nonprofit advocating for educational equity.

“Kids are losing out already, even though they still have their right to this education,” Shackleford said. “There are kids who are not in school today because their parents are holding them back.”

The class-action case originated in Texas.

In 1975, the state legislature said school districts could deny enrollment to children who weren’t “legally admitted” into the U.S., withholding state funds for those children’s education.

Two years later, the Tyler district decided to charge $1,000 tuition to Mexican students who couldn’t meet the legally admitted requirement. James Plyler was the superintendent of the Tyler Independent School District.

The case was brought by the .

Lower courts ruled for the children and their parents, noting that the societal costs of not educating the children outweighed the state’s harm. The lower courts also ruled the state could not preempt federal immigration law.

Eventually the case was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1982 upheld the rights of the students to receive a K-12 education, 5-4, citing the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.

“By denying these children a basic education,” the court said, “we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”

The court also said that holding children accountable for their parents’ actions “does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice.”

There by state legislatures to challenge the ruling.

In 2011, Alabama saw a dramatic drop in Latino student attendance, even among U.S.-born children, when the state ordered districts to determine the immigration status of students as they enrolled.

The law was later permanently blocked by a federal court.

passage of a law similar to the Texas law that led to the Plyler ruling.

The proposed law would allow districts to charge undocumented students tuition, and would require districts to check the legal status of students as they enrolled.

The bill recently passed out of an education committee.

The chilling effect of such proposals, like current calls for mass deportations, can be widespread for children, advocates said.

“How can you learn if you’re worried about whether or not your parents are going to be home when you get home from school?” Shackleford said.

Teachers nationwide are seeing the impact as students worry for themselves, their parents and friends.

“I think sometimes we forget that the words that we use as adults and the messages that we send are affecting our kids,” Shackleford, a former teacher, said. “And no one feels that more than teachers and classroom educators, because they’re right there in the rooms and hearing this and seeing the pain of their students.”

Information vacuums contribute to rumors

Voids in information leave room for misinformation, which is quickly spread by social media.

Local advocates for immigrant rights have been tamping down rumors about raids, especially in regard to schools.

There have not been any reported incidents involving ICE agents inside or on local K-12 school grounds.

But in February, near a Kansas City school, presumably as he was getting ready to drop a child off for the day’s lessons.

Homeland Security officials arrested a man they said had previously been deported. Staff of the Guadalupe Centers Elementary & Pre-K School acted quickly, escorting the child into the building.

For districts, managing communications can be a balance.

North Kansas City Schools began getting questions from parents about ICE and Customs and Border Protection early this year.

On Jan. 24, the district sent a notice to parents emphasizing policies that had been in place for several years.

“In general, law enforcement has the same limited level of access to student records as members of the public with no special permissions,” according to the notice. “Law enforcement agents are not permitted to speak with nor interact with students without a valid subpoena, court order or explicit parent permission unless it’s an emergency situation.”

Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Collier addressed immigration in a late January board meeting.

Collier said that work had begun “behind the scenes” after Trump rescinded the sensitive-places policy.

“What we didn’t want to do was to get out front and begin to alarm everybody, to create anxiety,” Collier said, noting the “feelings of heaviness and in some cases feelings of hopelessness.”

All staff would be trained, including legal and security teams, in identifying valid court orders or warrants.

She emphasized the emotional well-being of students. And the district has online.

“We’re going to make it to the other side of this,” Collier told her board. “So hold on. Don’t lose hope.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education  for any schools with race-based programming. In  sent to districts nationwide, the department ordered schools to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid or any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.

Now Los Angeles teens, working with , are trying to preserve diversity, equity and inclusion programs in LAUSD by showing their support for them.  

Last month, students, parents and local education activists with the  gathered at Iglesia Luterana St. Marks, a church in South Central Los Angeles, to rally for LA Unified’s DEI programming. 

The event, billed as a cross between a protest and a town hall meeting, also aimed to open up conversation about the lack of protections for gay and minority students under the Trump administration, said Maki Draper, a student leader with activist group Students Deserve. 

“I’m here to stand up for my people,” Draper said. “Stand up for those who feel like they might not have a voice. Stand up for those who are under attack right now.”

In addition to the actions by the Trump administration, Draper said advocates were speaking out against a civil rights complaint filed by a Virginia-based organization, , against LAUSD’s , which gives certain schools extra resources.

The complaint argued that the BSAP violated federal law by “” and prompted the district to announce that it would stop using race as a factor in choosing which schools participate in the program.   

Draper said the BSAP provides opportunities for Black students after historical oppression. The program places counselors and social workers in about 50 schools with large populations of Black students.

Through the program, students have been able to tour Historically Black Colleges and Universities, participate in unique clubs and receive more mental health services.

“With BSAP, I kind of feel more supported,” said Devon Beard, a senior at George Washington Preparatory Senior High School, who also attended the coalition event at Iglesia Luterana St. Marks. 

“It gives students a reason to go to school, like they actually want to get up in the morning,” Beard added. 

In 2020, the coalition successfully advocated for the defunding of $25 million from school police which was then put into BSAP. 

This year, the coalition’s organizers want LAUSD to expand the BSAP budget by $100 million annually and reinstate race as a criterion for the program, despite the complaint filed and that administration’s recent actions. 

The coalition has launched a sticker campaign to push those goals. Students passed out stickers at Iglesia Luterana St. Marks that said “LAUSD must protect Black, undocumented, and LGBTQ students,” and put them on their laptops and water bottles. 

Threats by the Trump administration for an immigration crackdown  LAUSD, said Alexa Delgado, a junior at Edward R. Roybal Learning Center who attended last month’s event at Iglesia Luterana St. Marks.  

Delgado said a  across LAUSD schools earlier this month showed a desire to stand up against immigration enforcement and ensure immigrant students know their rights and are protected by their schools. 

“No child should walk out of their home and be scared that they’re going to be taken away,” Delgado said. “And no parent should be scared that the child isn’t going to get home at the end of the day.” 

This article is part of a collaboration between ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Community leaders called on Baltimore County school officials Tuesday to ensure that undocumented students are protected, days after reports that an Overlea High School teacher reached out to immigration officials and offered to name names.

That incident has rippled through the immigrant community, leaving students and family members more scared than ever over their safety in school, advocates said during Tuesday night’s board meeting and at a news conference earlier in the day.

“This isn’t just about one teacher,” said Lucas Cunha, an Essex business owner who testified to the board. “He offered to hand over the names students to ICE – young people he was entrusted to protect.”

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Cunha, who was once undocumented, called the alleged actions of the Baltimore County teacher a “betrayal” that “didn’t just endanger immigrants, it shattered the trust of every student.”

Advocates were referring to a series of posts last week that appeared to come from a since-deleted account on X, called @RennerTraining, that tags the account of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and offers to share the names of undocumented students.

“If you want the names to investigate families to find illegals, let me know in dm [direct message]. I’ll give names and school. All in Md,” according to screenshots of the posts.

County school officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The Teachers Association of Baltimore County said in a Facebook post Tuesday that it was “aware of alleged actions by an educator at Overlea High School last week,” without further elaboration on the incident.

“It’s also important to note that all students have privacy rights based on federal FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) protections,” the Facebook statement said. “And while immigration issues may seem complicated, some things are simple: children do not decide where and how their parents choose to move.”

But Crisaly De Los Santos, Central Maryland and Baltimore director for CASA, said during a virtual event Tuesday afternoon that the incident has shattered the sense of security for families in the region.

“Families should feel confident that when their children are in schools, they’re safe and they’re protected and supported by teachers and administrators who they trust to care for their children,” she said. “But in light of recent events, we have seen how this basic expectation has not been met.”

She said that the county school board needs to “adopt a clear and comprehensive policy to ensure that ICE is going to be blocked from accessing school resources and personal information.”

“We need a policy that guarantees that students’ safety and their future is not going to be jeopardized by federal immigration enforcement,” she said. “The current policy is just not enough, and it does not provide the clarity some families need to feel safe in our schools.”

Several members of Baltimore County’s immigrant community said during the virtual event that the social media posts heightened anxiety many were already feeling under President Donald Trump (R). They did not provide their full names for privacy reasons.

A 12th grader named Helen shared that her goals are simple: She wants to become fluent in English and attend college. But she is now constantly worried that her “personal information will be shared with ICE,” which makes focusing on schoolwork difficult.

“Every student deserves to feel safe at school, no matter where they come from,” Helen said.

Another Baltimore County student, who used the pseudonym Rosa, said the United States is the country she “calls home,” but “hearing a county teacher threatened to call ICE made me feel that I did not belong in this country.”

Gricelda, a parent of three Baltimore County public school students, said she worries about sending her children to school each day.

“I have to think every day about the possibilities of family separation — and what this could lead to for many families 
 Just seeing that a Baltimore County Public School teacher has threatened to share students’ information with ICE, it really worries me,” she said through De Los Santos, who translated. “This is something that does not just affect me, but many other families, and I am constantly worried, thinking about if sending my kids to school is the safe thing to do.”

During open comments at the virtual board meeting, Cunha and others said a sense of security is important for immigrant safety so students can learn.

“Every single opportunity I got 
 was because of the trust that I built with my teachers over 20 years ago,” Cunha said. “That trust is the foundation of every student’s success. That very trust is what’s at stake here.”

Peter Baum, who was previously taught English as a second language in Baltimore County, said he’s been in “education for over eight years 
 and in my time I have never heard of such a massively egregious violation of student safety.”

While she did not speak on the case itself, Superintendent Myriam Rogers said during the virtual board meeting that “teachers, all staff, are expected to create safe learning environment for our schools, for our students.”

She also noted that federal and state law “protects student privacy and prohibits the release of student information.”

“When staff members violate those expectations and break policy, there are consequences. We absolutely do follow due process. There is an investigation, and based on the results of those investigations, next steps are determined,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Priscilla Monico MarĂ­n

Executive Director of the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prerna Arora

Columbia Teachers College Faculty, New York

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

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

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

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

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

Miguel Bocanegra

Immigration Lawyer with Cornell University’s Path2Papers Program, California

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alejandra VĂĄzquez Baur

Co-founder of National Newcomer Network, New York

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

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

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

Maribel Sainez

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

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

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

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

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

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

California lawmakers are proposing steps to protect K-12 students and families from mass deportations — although the real value of those proposals may be symbolic.

A pair of bills in the Legislature —  and  â€” aim to keep federal agents from detaining undocumented students or their families on or near school property without a warrant. The bills are a response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to deport undocumented immigrants, a move which could have major consequences for schools in California, which funds its schools based on attendance and where  have at least one undocumented parent.

Both bills would make it harder and more time-consuming for agents to enter schools or day care centers. But they can only delay, not stop, arrests. 

“In no way can these bills override federal law,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at UC Davis. “But the bills respond to a great concern in the community that it’s not safe to take your children to school. 
 I can’t emphasize enough how important this is, how vulnerable undocumented immigrants feel right now.”

“In no way can these bills override federal law,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at UC Davis. “But the bills respond to a great concern in the community that it’s not safe to take your children to school. 
 I can’t emphasize enough how important this is, how vulnerable undocumented immigrants feel right now.”

AB 49, proposed by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, would require immigration agents to obtain written permission from the superintendent before coming onto school property. It also bars agents from being in rooms where children are present. SB 48, introduced by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, would prohibit local police from cooperating with federal agents — such as assisting in arrests or providing information about families’ immigration status — within one mile of a school. It also bars schools from sharing student and family information with federal authorities. 

School districts have also doubled down on their efforts to protect students and families. Los Angeles Unified has partnered with legal aid organizations to assist families and instructed schools not to ask students about their immigration status. San Francisco Unified has .

“(San Francisco Unified) is a safe haven for all students regardless of citizenship status,” Superintendent Maria Su wrote to the community after the November election. “SFUSD restates our position that all students have the right to attend school regardless of their immigration status or that of their family members.”

Schools as safe havens

Schools have long been safe havens for immigrant students. Under a , public schools must enroll all students regardless of their immigration status and can’t charge tuition to students who aren’t legal residents. And since 2011, discourage agents from making immigration arrests at schools, hospitals, churches, courthouses and other “sensitive locations.”

But Trump said he plans to  guidelines, and the Heritage Foundation, which published the right-leaning Project 2025 manifesto, is encouraging states to . That could set up the possible overturn of the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing access to school for undocumented students. The foundation’s rationale is that government agencies such as schools are already overburdened and need to prioritize services for U.S. citizens.

“The (Biden) administration’s new version of America is nothing more than an open-border welfare state,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, . “No country can sustain or survive such a vision.”

Muratsuchi, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said he was inspired to author AB 49 just after the election, when he listened to the concerns of immigrant students in the political science class he teaches at El Camino Community College in Torrance. 

“It became clear there was more and more fear among my students, not only for themselves but for their families. The fear of families being torn apart is very real,” Muratuschi said. “We want to send a strong message to our immigrant students that we’re going to do everything we can to protect them.”

‘Too scared to speak up’

For most undocumented families, deportation would mean a plunging into poverty and in many cases, violence. Nahomi, a high school senior in Fresno County whom CalMatters is identifying by her middle name because of her immigration status, described the threat of deportation as “a major worry for my family and I. Our lives could change completely in a blink of an eye.”

Nahomi and her parents arrived in California in 2011 from the city of Culiacan in Sinaloa, Mexico, an area plagued by . They initially planned to stay until Sinaloa became safer, but once they settled in the Central Valley they decided the risks of returning outweighed the risk of deportation, so they stayed. Nahomi’s father works in construction and her mother is a homemaker, raising Nahomi and her younger sister.

While she and her family fear deportation, Nahomi is not afraid to attend school. She said schools can help families know their rights and help children feel safe.

“I feel very welcomed and safe there,” she said. “It is a very diverse high school and I just feel like any other student. 
 (But) a lot of these families are probably too scared to speak up about doubts they might have.”

Politically unpopular?

Patricia GĂĄndara, an education professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, said the risk of federal agents arresting students at schools is probably small. It’s unclear how many children in K-12 schools are undocumented, but it’s probably a relatively small number, she said. In any case, immigration enforcement that affects children almost always sparks public outcry from both parties, she said. 

“Some people might say they’re anti-immigrant, but it’s another thing entirely when the family up the street, whom they’ve known for 20 years, suddenly gets deported, or your kid’s best friend gets deported,” said Gandara, who’s studied the topic extensively. “It’s politically very unpopular.”

Still, the proposed bills could send a powerful message that schools are safe places, she said. Immigration crackdowns can have a , a Stanford study found, which can lead to less funding for schools, particularly low-income schools that enroll large numbers of immigrant children. 

Immigration crackdowns can also lead to an increase in bullying, anxiety and general uncertainty on campus, not just for immigrant children but for everyone, GĂĄndara said. Teachers, in particular, experience high levels of stress when their students’ safety is endangered, she said. 

“Schools are one of the last places immigrant families feel safe,” she said. “But as soon as (federal agents) move into schools, they’re not so safe any more. These bills say, ‘We’re not going to sit back and let this happen. Not all of government is against you.”

California ‘one of the best places to be’

Both bills are awaiting hearings in the Legislature. Tammy Lin, supervising attorney with the University of San Diego Immigration Clinic, expects California to continue to take steps to protect undocumented families, but political conflicts will be inevitable.

The incoming Trump administration is likely to battle California and other left-leaning states over immigration matters. Even within California, conflicts are likely to erupt between state leaders and those in more conservative regions, or even between agencies in the same area. In San Diego County, for example, the Board of Supervisors ordered the sheriff’s office to not notify federal immigration officers when it releases suspected undocumented inmates from jail, but the . 

Lin also said she wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an attempt to overturn the Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing education to undocumented children, potentially paving the way for other immigrants’ rights to be reversed. 

“It’s a slippery slope,” Lin said. “Immigrants know this, which is why there’s immense fear and uncertainty right now. But bills like these show that California is still one of the best places you can be.”

Suriyah Jones, a member of the CalMatters Youth Journalism Initiative, contributed to this story.

This was originally published on .

Incoming president Donald Trump has vowed to .

For students who are eyeing college, his presidency represents a potentially brutal Sophie’s Choice if they have undocumented parents: Risk exposing them to a possible immigration dragnet by completing the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, or leave thousands of dollars in cash for school on the table. 

While researchers and advocates have yet to hear anything concrete from Trump representatives about using financial aid data to target undocumented residents, they know families are afraid.

“Front line staff that work directly with students are reporting that students and parents are asking them if the FAFSA is safe” given Trump’s campaign promises of mass deportation, said Marcos Montes, policy director for Southern California College Attainment Network, a coalition of nonprofits that help students apply for college admission and financial aid.

The National College Attainment Network said those fears are justified. It “cannot assure mixed-status students and families that data submitted to the US Department of Education, as part of the FAFSA process, will continue to be protected,” a read late last month.

That fear is exacerbated by  that the only way to deport undocumented parents whose children are citizens is to have the whole family leave. “I don’t want to be breaking up families,” Trump said. “So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” How Trump can force out citizens, including those with parents not born in the U.S., is unclear; experts say .

An estimated 3.3 million Californians , including 1 in 5 children under 18, according to data from Equity Research Institute, a USC research group.

A California workaround

Experts say California students eligible for financial aid can minimize the possible harm to their undocumented parents. Unlike the FAFSA, the state aid application is not shared with federal agencies. That policy is  in place under California’s so-called “sanctuary” laws  the use of state resources to . Several legal experts told CalMatters the Trump administration would have to clear a high legal bar to gain access to those state records and that court cases have put restrictions on how wide a net immigration enforcement agencies can cast in their search for data. 

Because the deadline for state financial aid is in March — though there are plans to move it to April — and the federal deadline , Californians attending college here should complete the state application first, said Montes. Then they should wait to see if the Trump administration will break precedent and begin using the federal financial aid data for immigration enforcement purposes.

That strategy is also endorsed by Madeleine Villanueva, the interim higher education director at Immigrants Rising, a California-based advocacy and research group focused on undocumented residents. She stressed that there’s a bevy of analysts and immigrant rights advocates who’ll be watching for updates from the Trump administration.

“Unfortunately, we can’t say what’s going to happen federally,” she said. But the California state aid application, known as the California Dream Act Application, is an “extra layer of safety when it comes to applying for financial aid.”

The California Student Aid Commission, an agency with the sole goal of getting students more money, suggests students may need to forgo federal aid given the risks to their families. The agency, which runs the state’s financial aid programs,  that completing just the state aid application is a “viable option” for students in mixed-status homes who have “fears of adverse action by federal immigration enforcement.”

However, taking a wait-and-see approach with federal aid means California campuses won’t have a full picture of how much aid a student is likely to get when they send out financial aid estimates to admitted students in the spring. The University of California’s central office worries that students may not complete the FAFSA and lose out on aid. Both UC and the California State University indicated to CalMatters they’ll process either form students submit and will work with students who file their federal applications later.

About , which waives tuition at the public universities and partially at private colleges. That grant plus the state’s  can add up to more than $17,000 in aid in one year. The state aid application ensures students fearful of the federal application can still receive the state support for which they’re eligible.

The University of California’s undergraduate student government is also on edge about FAFSA. The lack of a firm firewall “could put certain students at risk,” said Saanvi Arora, external vice president for UC Berkeley’s student government and a board member for the systemwide student government.

Understanding the FAFSA risk

Students who are  are eligible for up to $7,400 in Pell grants and access to federal loans that come with repayment protections that are often stronger than what the private sector offers. To receive this aid, students who live with their parents need them to fill out portions of the federal aid application. More recently,  have been asked to indicate they lack one and then must answer a set of questions about their identity.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees the country’s immigration enforcement, have a regularly renewed . Because students need to be citizens or permanent residents to get financial aid, a signed agreement between the two departments states that students’ information they submit for FAFSA will be matched against an . It’s one that hundreds of state, local and federal agencies use to determine whether an individual is eligible for federal benefits. Neither SAVE nor the agency that operates it, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, are used for immigration enforcement purposes. 

Conceptually, it’s not hard to use that federal financial aid data for enforcement purposes, according to experts who spoke with CalMatters. However, doing so would be a major break from current protocol. 

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education “has not provided and will not provide information gathered through FAFSA to any federal immigration-related agency for law enforcement activities,” wrote in an email James Kvaal, who holds the number two spot at the U.S. Department of Education and is the top higher education officer in the federal government. However, he wrote, “students and their families should make the decisions that are right for them.”

That does not “sound like a robust encouragement to go ahead and fill out the FAFSA,” said Bob Shireman, who was a senior higher education official in the education department during the Obama administration.

The agreement between the departments “is not much of a firewall, it is more like a picket fence,” Shireman said in an interview. The agreement can be changed in a matter of months, he said, “so if the next administration wants to use education department records to identify people who may have an immigration status that could subject them to deportation, I don’t see anything preventing that from happening.”

Federal laws limit the data sharing that can occur between the U.S. Department of Education and law enforcement agencies, said Shelveen Ratnam, a spokesperson for the California Student Aid Commission. Ratnam said that current law “strictly prohibits” agencies in possession of personally identifiable information, like parental data, from releasing that information, with few exceptions. Some other laws and policies also apply and the gist is that an agency can only use the personal information of others in ways that support the mission of that federal agency.

But if the U.S. Department of Education gets subpoenaed for information, the department’s “responses and likelihood of challenging the demand for information are unknown,” according to Ratnam.

Even analysts who say using parental FAFSA information is an inefficient way to find possible undocumented parents urge caution. They say it’s not out of the question that a Trump administration could try to make use of that data for immigration enforcement purposes.

While “it’s sort of methodologically flawed as a way to identify individuals,” said Corinne Kentor, an , “that doesn’t mean that it won’t be attempted. But I think it is probably harder and more work than other avenues.”

California Dream Act Application is safer

The California Dream Act Application has more protections than the federal application. Though originally designed to allow undocumented students who are California residents to apply for state college benefits, the application in 2024 was modified to permit any student who ran into problems with the federal application to at least apply for state grants. The change stemmed from colossal data issues with the federal application this year that  from completing the FAFSA.

According to a , “the government can’t enforce a subpoena that is just ‘fishing’ for data about undocumented people,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a scholar on immigration law at UCLA. That’s in contrast to “trying to gather information on a particular individual that the government has reason to suspect is here in violation of the immigration laws.”

Arulanantham also said that a federal agency asking California’s financial aid agency to search databases for undocumented students could run afoul of the 10th Amendment.

Finally, the state’s financial aid agency could challenge a judicial order or subpoena that seeks student records on the grounds that it’s not specific enough and violates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, Ratnam said. 

Now what does all this mean for students with undocumented parents who already submitted FAFSA information last year? Their information is already in government systems. Should they continue to file their FAFSA? Experts had few answers. They said that’s a decision that only families can decide together given the varying protections available.

Arora, the UC student government member, is sympathetic to those households. It’s “absolutely a tough question,” she said. That’s one reason she wants UC officials to bolster existing immigration legal aid services, such as bringing in more lawyers. 

It’s one answer she has to her own question: “How do we mitigate retribution that’s likely to happen against those students?”

This was originally published on .

In January, the University of California Board of Regents broke the hearts of undocumented students by halting a proposal to allow them to work on campus. A few days later, David Alvarez had a plan.

The  huddled with student organizers and decided to draft a bill to compel the UC, as well as the community colleges and California State University, to do what the UC regents would not.

Federal law prohibits employers from hiring anyone who is undocumented, but Alvarez’s  says California’s public colleges and universities should be exempt and allowed to hire undocumented students for on-campus jobs. The approach rests on an untested legal theory . It’s based on the argument that a pivotal federal  doesn’t apply to state agencies, including public colleges and universities.

Assemblymember , a Corona Democrat and chair of the California Latino Legislative Caucus, has introduced a  that, if passed, would be taken to CA voters in the form of a ballot measure.

Both bills are . 

“We wouldn’t have to do this if the federal government actually did their job and passed immigration reform,” said Alvarez in an interview with CalMatters.   

Instead of working on-campus jobs like their peers, undocumented students must seek employment as independent contractors or find under-the-table jobs, . If Alvarez’s bill prevails, an estimated 60,000 undocumented students could benefit.

Last May, the UC Board of Regents  the plan to allow undocumented students to work. In January, the regents reversed course, voting 10 to 6 to delay any implementation by a year. , who sobbed in the public meeting space, castigated the regents and reverted to an agonizing square one in which they lacked the legal right to work.

Alvarez’s bill cleared its first hurdle in April, but it faces a  during an opaque legislative process known as , in which members of the appropriations committee decide in relative secrecy whether bills with a price tag advance or die.

A  the bill could cost California a few million dollars to implement these hiring changes and to handle the legal fees, should someone decide to sue a college or university for hiring undocumented students.  Those costs could become a large obstacle as the .

How much of an impact the bill would have on undocumented students is an open question: Most students — regardless of their immigration status — work off campus. Federal law is clear that private employers must follow the employment ban. The bills by Alvarez and Cervantes do not extend to the many other state agencies where undocumented students could work after graduation and earn competitive wages.

‘It is not fair’

For Alvarez, the bill is a continuation of California’s commitment to for undocumented students. Already the , grants and loans to these students, but they’re barred from receiving federal dollars. A campus job would allow them to cover the difference when financial aid falls short; it would help them with major expenses like housing, transportation and food.

“I’m out here fighting for the right to be given the opportunity to apply to a job on campus,” said Karely Amaya Rios . The 23-year-old is a graduate student at UCLA and has a pending job offer from a professor to help him write a book and teach his immigrant rights courses. Though she’s lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, she’s undocumented and ineligible for the job. “It is not fair,” she said.

Rios  that she cobbles together enough money to cover rent and food costs by babysitting and selling clothes at a swap meet with her mother. She also receives some scholarships and stipends.

“I fear that all of you do not understand how disappointing and gut-wrenching it feels to be denied my humanity and my right to access the same opportunities as my peers,” added Fatima Zeferino, an undocumented Cal State Long Beach student, at the April hearing.

°ä±đ°ù±čČčČÔłÙ±đČő’&ČÔČúČő±è; would target just the UC, a potentially necessary move because the UC is . The Legislature’s bills can rarely force the system to do something.

Still, Alvarez’s office believes the UC “would be bound” by his bill, his district director, Lisa Schmidt, wrote in an email. She added that “even if it were not formally bound it would comply with the law once the Cal State and (community colleges) were doing so.”

Why public colleges are worried

The UC isn’t formally opposed to the bill, but its  the bill could expose UC hiring managers to civil and criminal prosecution and jeopardize the billions of dollars in federal research grants the university receives. Alvarez bristled at one objection the UC raised: that the bill as law could expose “undocumented students and their families to the possibility of criminal prosecution or deportation.” He called that “borderline offensive to students” who already have to navigate the legal complexities of their immigration status outside of school.  

Alvarez cited his own experience as a child born in the U.S. living in fear of what would happen to his undocumented parents. They were eventually granted legal status through the same 1986 federal law that now bars undocumented residents from working. 

Hovering in plain sight is the concern that a potential Trump White House would wage an aggressive legal attack on the university. It would potentially repeat a judicial system showdown that saw the university  to end job protections for undocumented workers who came to the country when they were young. That previous legal saga involved the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but federal courts  halted the federal government’s ability to accept new applications.

The UC Office of the President never appeared persuaded by the legal argument put forward by the UCLA scholars. It sought outside legal opinion, and the conclusion was that the plan wouldn’t be “legally viable,” .

UC’s April letter to legislators underscored that worry: “However, after receiving advice from both inside and outside legal counsel, we concluded that there were considerable risks for the University and the students we aim to support.”

Ahilan Arulanantham, one of the two UCLA legal scholars behind the theory that state agencies are exempt from the federal rule barring undocumented residents from working,  that no hiring manager could be prosecuted if universities began hiring undocumented students.

“The risk that people would actually be criminally prosecuted for following state law is, in my view, vanishingly small,” he said then. “And we’re not aware of any example where people have been criminally prosecuted by the federal government for following a law that they were required to follow as a matter of the state.”

More likely is that the state would be sued and the matter would play out in courts, Arulanantham said. “If the universities lost that lawsuit and they still kept trying to hire people, of course that would present a different question.”

The state’s attorney general would defend the campuses in those suits, Alvarez said. The press office of the attorney general wouldn’t comment on Arulanantham’s legal argument or whether the attorney general would defend the campuses in a possible suit.

Cal State has issued no position, though it reiterated another point the UC made: The bill “could have consequences on the federal aid the CSU and our students receive,” wrote Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson for Cal State. The fear isn’t unfounded. When the UC system weighed the issue, Republican Congressman Darell Issa asking that he “please inform Congress how the system intends to refund its current federal funding, as well as provide a detailed estimate of the fiscal impact to students by foregoing future federal assistance.”

Can community college students benefit?

While the legal risk of the bill looms large, the impact of the legislation on undocumented students may be limited in scope. That’s because the majority of undocumented students attend community college. The Cal State system has fewer undocumented students, and the UC campuses have the least, according to  from each system. 

Yet community college students are the least likely to work on-campus jobs. When they do work, only 7% of them have a campus job, according to an analysis provided by California Student Aid Commission. The rates are higher at Cal State and UC campuses, where 16% of working students at Cal State and about half of working students at the UC are employed on campus.

Many community college students work full time in the private sector, whereas campus jobs typically restrict students to no more than 20 hours a week. The hourly limit comes from research that says . 

Over the past six years, Jerry Reyes has studied at Reedley College, just south of Fresno, though he left at various points. He’s undocumented and ineligible for DACA, which offers temporary work permits for undocumented youth. 

He worked anyway, taking a job at an agricultural packaging house, where he made around $15 an hour. They “didn’t really ask” about his immigration status, he said. 

Better jobs are hard to find, he said. “I just ignore potential opportunities because I know they’re just going to turn me away because of my status.”

After a brief stint at San Francisco State, he returned to Reedley College, where he’s pursuing a new major in business administration and serving as a trustee on the community college district’s board. The position is supposed to pay $375 per month, but he said the district won’t compensate him because of his immigration status.

“It’s frustrating,” Reyes said, to watch others get paid for student jobs when he does the same amount of work. He supports Alvarez’s bill but he wants a broader solution too. “A lot of these (undocumented) students don’t work campus jobs,” he said, “and even the jobs they take don’t pay as well.”

Alvarez said he’d consider future legislation to open job opportunities in other sectors too, but not before passing this legislation. “Look, this is already a heavy lift,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy.”

This was originally published on .

The University of California suspended for a year its plan to allow undocumented students to acquire campus jobs, crushing a student-led movement more than a year in the making.  

The decision all but halts an effort by UCLA law professors and student advocates to create a pathway for the estimated 4,000 undocumented UC students to earn a paycheck legally. While many students without legal immigrant protections receive state financial aid and have their tuition waived, those students are often on their own financially to cover rent, food and other necessary expenses to continue their studies. These students also are blocked from receiving federal grants, further intensifying their fiscal strain.

“We have concluded that the proposed legal pathway is not viable at this time,” said Michael Drake, president of the UC, at today’s regents meeting. He said the proposal is “inadvisable” and “carries significant risk for the institution and for those we serve.”

However, “as new information becomes available, we will evaluate that information, and if appropriate, move ahead,” he said.

Regents, who make up the top governing board of the UC, voted to formally rescind a policy it adopted in May to explore implementing the hiring plan. Undocumented students in the audience screamed through tears, some who were on a hunger strike since Tuesday to pressure the UC to adopt the hiring measure. 

“Cowards!” a student yelled. “Shame,” another said. “I hope you live with this for the rest of your life,” said another.

“I’m deeply disappointed that the UC Regents and President Drake shirked their duties to the students they are supposed to protect and support,” said Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, a UCLA undocumented student and leader at Undocumented Student-Led Network, in a statement. “We as UC students deserve so much more from our university leadership. This is not the end of our fight for equality.”

Ten regents voted inÌęÌęto rescind the proposal for a year and six opposed. One voter abstained.

“I can’t think of a moment where I’ve been more disappointed sitting around this board table,” said John PĂ©rez, a UC regent and member of a working group to explore the plan. He voted no.

The UC would have been the first university to adopt such a measure, said Jorge Silva, a senior spokesperson for the UC.

UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, and his legal team were “very skeptical of the legal theory,” said Merhawi Tesfai, a UC regent and graduate student who votes on the board. Tesfai was also part of the working group and wanted the UC to hire undocumented students.

Drake in his comments today said that his office consulted with legal experts “”

Tesfai said the general counsel’s office sought legal analysis from multiple outside law firms, and their conclusion was that “this wasn’t something that they would recommend and that it wouldn’t be legally viable,” Tesfai said, summarizing comments that Robinson and Drake made to him and other regents.

After today’s vote, he and a few other regents consoled the crying undocumented students in attendance at the UC San Francisco meeting space. “It was all justified anger,” he said.

Legal theory

Core to the novel legal argument of the UCLA coalition Opportunity For All is that while a 1986 federal law bars employers from hiring undocumented immigrants, the UC, as a state agency,Ìę. “Under governing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, if a federal law does not mention the states explicitly, that federal law does not bind state government entities,” the coalition’s 2022 legal memo said. Nothing in that federal law “expressly binds or even mentions state government entities.”Ìę

PĂ©rez said that “we have gotten so focused on the question of what the law clearly says today that we’re losing sight of the moral imperative of what the law should be interpreted as being.”

But Drake said the risks were too great. Human resources employees and legal staff “might be subject to criminal or civil prosecution if they knowingly participate in hiring practices deemed impermissible under federal law,” he said. He said the UC “will be subject to civil fines, criminal penalties, or debarment from federal contracting if the university is found to be in violation of the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act,” the 1986 federal law. The billions in federal research grants could also be at risk, Drake said.

The argument to hire undocumented students has the support of some of the country’s most prominent immigration law scholars, who signed the legal memo backers of Opportunity for All published in 2022. Meanwhile, more than 500 facultyÌęÌęsaying “we will hire undocumented students into educational employment positions for which they are qualified once given authority to do so by the UC.”

Student advocates of Opportunity For All pushed the UC Regents to take the group’s legal theory seriously. Last May, the regents voted to considerÌęÌęand what that process would look like. StudentsÌę, but months later were furious when the UC blew past its own deadline on how to proceed at the November meeting.ÌęÌęby crossing the stanchions separating them from the regents, shutting down the meeting. That prompted a meeting between advocates and several regents.

Those regents told the students then that they were committed to a full roll-out of the plan by this month, but they were not speaking for the full board.

“It is deeply shameful that the UC is holding them back from achieving their full potential,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA immigration law scholar and one of the architects of the legal theory arguing undocumented students can legally work at the UC.Ìę

Recent federal rules

The ability to work legally is a matter of survival for immigrants in the U.S. But while more than half a million undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. young are allowed to have jobs through the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, federal courts have halted the federal government’s ability to accept new applications. But even if the courts permit new applications, most of today’s young undocumented immigrants wouldn’t benefit. That’s because DACA applies to individuals who arrived in the U.S.ÌęÌęand are at least 15 years old upon applying, leaving most young students today ineligible.

In 2023,Ìęwere under 21 years old.

“As a leader of an American Indian nation, for us to sit here and be so concerned and keep talking about risk when the students and their families have gone through so much risk just to get here, only can strike me as patronizing,” said Gregory Sarris, a UC regent.

The UC has a history of upholding legal protections for undocumented students. The university sued the Trump administration in 2017 for ending the deferred action program. ThatÌęÌęwith a Supreme Court decision upholding the program in 2020. DACA lived on, but lower court decisions since then have blocked the Biden administrationÌę.

But PĂ©rez said the UC didn’t lead, as Drake said, but reacted to student, faculty and community advocacy to challenge the Trump administration. Roughly 17,000 CaliforniansÌęÌębecause of decisions by the Trump administration and the courts.Ìę

Donald Trump is likely to emerge as the Republican nominee for the Oval Office. A Trump presidency could lead to a redux in the fight between the UC and the federal government over immigration rights for the country’s young residents. 

“What happens if we have a new administration?” asked Jose Hernandez, a UC regent who supported the hiring plan. “I don’t even think this is going to be considered to be implemented, to tell you the truth, so I think we’re squandering a great opportunity.”

There had already been pushback to the UC proposal from some Republicans, among them Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County. He shot off  to Gov. Gavin Newsom warning that California couldn’t “pick and choose which federal laws to follow and which to declare null and void.” If the UC system did approve the policy change, he wrote, “please inform Congress how the system intends to refund its current federal funding, as well as provide a detailed estimate of the fiscal impact to students by foregoing future federal assistance.”

Work and financial aid

Abraham Cruz, 25, is a UCLA senior and undocumented. His DACA status lapsed a few years ago and he has been unable to renew it, so no employer can legally hire him.

He found a loophole, but it’s uncommon: Cruz is part of a labor cooperative where he’s his own boss. He consults clients on immigration policy, research and writing, he said.

Still, he’d rather have a campus job, where managers know to prioritize students’ academics over work. Or he could work with a professor and pursue research in his field of labor studies.

Drake, UC’s president, said in November that he wants to protect students from any legal consequences, but Cruz said students are already assuming the risk of working under the table or in dangerous jobs, often below minimum wage.

“I don’t know what the UC thinks, but if it doesn’t offer jobs on campus students are going to have to find a way 
 to come up with that money,” he said. “The best thing the UC could do is provide these safe jobs for students.”

PĂ©rez echoed that view. “We can fool ourselves into thinking that our students aren’t working. They are,” he said. “They’re working in underground jobs subjected to inhumane and horrific conditions.”

Another option for undocumented students is receiving an academic fellowship. But fellowships and scholarships are financial aid — and no student can receive aid above the state cap, which is equal to what a campus calculates is the cost of attendance. Even the most generous financial aid package from the UC still expects a student to find $8,000 to $10,000 of their own money each year to pay for tuition, housing, food and other costs. Academic fellowships and outside scholarships can’t exceed that $8,000 to $10,000 personal contribution.

And while students with income could see their financial aid decrease, most undocumented students  to qualify for California’s marquee financial aid tool, the Cal Grant, which waives tuition. 

“I’m frustrated, I’m pissed off, I’m angry that we’re at this point,” said Keith Ellis, a regent representing UC alumni. “I feel like we’ve led on the students, that we’ve lied to you in some ways, and for what it’s worth, I apologize.”

This was originally published in .

When Deysi Mojica received her acceptance to UC Riverside, she was excited. Not only had she overcome her high school’s lack of resources to help undocumented students like herself apply to college, but the university was offering a financial aid package that would make her college dream possible.

“Even though I am undocumented,” said Mojica, now a first-year student, “the amount of money that they gave me was basically covering all my expenses.” 

But an unexpected $13,000 charge from the university just before she was due to start classes quickly changed her excitement into confusion, leaving her wondering where the money she was awarded had gone. It was only after repeated calls to the financial aid office, Mojica said, that a helpful student assistant who was also undocumented gave her the information that saved her from dropping out: Her aid package was held up because a signature was missing from one of her application forms.

Like Mojica, many undocumented students lack accurate information about applying for financial aid or find the process intimidating. California has since 2011 allowed undocumented students to receive financial aid from the state and its public universities if they meet certain eligibility requirements. But students, advocates, and even the California Student Aid Commission itself say the aid application developed under a state law known as the  is unnecessarily complex, not enough college staff are trained to advise students about it, and campus departments don’t collaborate well when processing applications. As a result, they say, many undocumented students are missing out on aid for which they qualify.

Only 14% of undocumented students in California receive any form of financial aid to pursue higher education, according to a recent California Student Aid Commission . Of the nearly 45,000 undocumented students who applied for financial aid for this past academic year, fewer than 30% ultimately enrolled in school and received aid.

“What we know is we’ve got a lot of students that are willing and going through the process, but they’re not getting the financial aid support,” said Marlene Garcia, executive director of the student aid commission. “I think that’s a starting point to analyze that there is a problem here.”

One of the problems Garcia cited: Verifying eligibility for the aid can be cumbersome and fear-inducing to undocumented students concerned about the risks of sharing their personal information.

California exempts undocumented students from paying nonresident tuition if they spent three years at, and received a degree, diploma or certificate from a California high school or community college. When those students want to apply for financial aid, they must also submit a document — also known as an AB540 affidavit —  to the campus they plan to attend verifying they qualify for the exemption and promising to legalize their immigration status as soon as possible.  

The student aid commission then randomly selects 20% of students for verification that the information they reported in their applications is accurate. 

But individual campuses do the actual verifying, and there is no statewide standard. 

California State University Chico and American River College, for example, accept a simple statement from students that they are eligible and only require extra documents if there is conflicting information in their applications, according to the student aid commission. But other campuses require much more information, such as W-2 forms, IRS tax transcripts, and/or household size information.

That’s when some students fall through the cracks, said Sergio Belloso, a counselor at Santa Monica College’s , which provides legal, mental health and financial aid counseling services for the college’s undocumented students. 

“Sometimes students just stop that process, because they’re like, ‘I don’t want to give them my information,’ ” Belloso said.

The affidavit and financial aid application also must be sent to different departments on campus, often causing delays and confusion for students.

At Santa Monica College, the Dream Resource Center serves on average 200 undocumented students per semester, Belloso said. Although tuition at California community colleges is just $46 per credit hour, or free on some campuses, many students, regardless of immigration status, use financial aid to cover additional expenses such as textbooks, transportation, and living costs. 

Belloso said he and other center staff spend a large portion of their time and resources on helping students get financial aid, including those who don’t qualify for aid and in-state tuition.  If other campus staff members were better trained to understand financial aid for undocumented students, the center would have more time to explore other aspects of its mission, such as providing legal help, he said.  

Cristina Sanchez, who provides drop-in counseling to undocumented students at Solano College, said she started her job right after graduating from college with little more than an Excel spreadsheet with student contact information. As the sole, part-time staff member tasked with supporting about 200 undocumented students, Sanchez is also concerned the students she serves may not be getting the financial aid information they need. 

“I was not given any training or anything like that, it was kind of like, ‘Here you go,’” Sanchez said. “So it’s been a lot of teaching myself or going out of my way to learn more, because I’m not undocumented.” 

Sanchez said a lot of times she is sending students to other counselors and financial aid officers, creating a game of hot potato and potential communication breakdowns between campus departments. 

Strengthening campus centers for undocumented students could help such students persist and navigate financial aid difficulties, students and counselors said. Even though the staff at UC Riverside’s  couldn’t fix Mojica’s financial aid problem, she said, they welcomed her to campus, apologized for the difficulties she was having and even helped her find a work-study job doing social media for an undocumented student organization. Mojica said the support helped her feel like she belonged on campus.

“They were super welcoming. They spoke to my mom, started telling me about our (food) pantry and about the groceries. Although I didn’t ask, they were already giving me so much information,” said Mojica. “It had a big impact on me.”

The center, which supports more than 600 students, one of the largest undocumented student populations among UC campuses, plans to hire a dedicated counselor to assist undocumented students with their financial aid applications. 

Meanwhile, the student aid commission is working to tackle some of the issues in the Dream Act application process. It has recommended reducing the percentage of applications requiring verification and allowing Dream Act applicants to receive text message updates on the status of their aid. 

The commission is also sponsoring Assembly Bill 1540, introduced by Los Angeles Democratic Assemblymember Mike Fong, which would allow undocumented students to fill out a single application for both their financial aid and residency. It’s currently under consideration in the appropriations committee. 

“We think that it should be intuitive. Students shouldn’t have to go through a maze to figure out how to get financial aid,” said Garcia. “The financial aid system should meet students where they’re at more effectively.”

Although both Sanchez and Belloso are excited to see a more streamlined application for students, Belloso feels there is still more that can be done to help undocumented students pursue higher education. He hopes campuses and the aid commission will collect and share campus-level data on how many undocumented students are applying for and receiving aid, so counselors like him can better support them. More financial aid training for other campus staff would also help, he said.

“Colleges may say ‘The Dream program is there, undocumented students can get help,’ but it doesn’t mean that we’re actually helping all the students,” he said. 

GonzĂĄlez is a fellow with the , a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.

This story was originally published by .

Speaking to reporters at a campaign event in Houston on Thursday, Abbott expanded on comments he made late Wednesday during

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During the broadcast, Abbott said he would revisit the landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, which struck down a Texas law that denied state funding to educate noncitizens.

In that case, four immigrant families had sued the Tyler Independent School District for expelling their children when they could not provide birth certificates.

Abbott said that states need to be able to enforce their own immigration policies or the federal government should cover the cost of educating undocumented children in public schools.

“The Supreme Court has ruled states have no authority themselves to stop illegal immigration into the states,” he said. “However, after the Plyler decision they say, ‘Nevertheless, states have to come out of pocket to pay for the federal government’s failure to secure the border.’ So one or both of those decisions will have to go.”

Abbott, who has sent thousands of National Guard members to the to shore up what he has insisted is soft immigration enforcement by the Biden administration, is also a vocal opponent to the lifting of the policy known as Title 42, which turned immigrants away at the United States’ border with Mexico because of the pandemic. That order is expected to be lifted later this month.

Abbott pointed to the Plyler decision, as well as a 2012 Supreme Court decision that found that Arizona could not pass immigration laws that undermine federal immigration policy, striking down most of a state immigration law there.

The governor said those two decisions together violate the U.S. Constitution, which says the federal government can’t commandeer a state employee or a budget to enact federal policy.

Last month, a Texas Education Agency lawyer testified before the House Public Education Committee that federal guidance indicates that denying enrollment or attendance based on citizenship status would violate Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Texas does not track the citizenship status of students. Therefore, it is unclear how many undocumented students are enrolled or what the financial impact on Texas public schools is. Texas spends a minimum of $6,160 per student, which lags behind the .

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund sued Tyler ISD Superintendent James Plyler on behalf of four families in the district after the state passed a law allowing schools to charge tuition to undocumented students. In a statement Thursday, the legal organization slammed Abbott’s suggestion to relitigate Plyler.

“[W]hile the Supreme Court split on the constitutionality of the Texas statute challenged in Plyler, all of the justices, including then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist, agreed that the Texas law seeking to exclude undocumented children from school was bad public policy,” said Thomas Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel. “All justices recognized the folly in excluding certain kids from school; ubiquitous truancy laws embody this well-supported notion. Abbott now seeks to inflict by intention the harms that nine justices agreed should be avoided 40 years ago.”

Abbott also told reporters Thursday that immigration is “different” today than it was 40 years ago when Plyler was decided.

“The only language barrier initially was Spanish. Now we have people coming from more than 105 different countries across the globe,” he said. “Who has that level of expertise where we can find the teachers who know all these multitude of different languages to where we would be able to educate kids and think how much that would cost?”

Kate McGee covers higher education atÌę, the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This articleÌęÌęat TexasTribune.org.

Esquivel didn’t know it, but the outing was a wellness retreat for undocumented immigrant youth put together by a group called . Brought to the United States from Mexico as a small child, Esquivel had been hiding his legal status for years. Up in the mountains, though, his new companions talked openly about being undocumented — and celebrated their roots. 

“They were so connected to their culture,” he recalls. “The food, the way they talked. They had a guitar and they were singing songs, old Mexican songs, around the campfire.”

“Sin papeles, sin miedo,” they said.

Without papers, without fear.

Esquivel cried the entire weekend. After so long guarding his family’s secrets — fleeing drug gang violence in Chihuahua, taking refuge in a relative’s garage in Albuquerque — everything about the experience moved him. His undocumented status was just the heaviest layer of the shame he’d been accumulating ever since he was 7 years old. 

Esquivel returned home profoundly changed, convinced there was tremendous empowerment in speaking his truth. “I was hooked,” he says. “I was like, I want to do this. I want to be this.” 

Soon after, as a newly minted Dream Team organizer, Esquivel found himself speaking to a classroom of teens at Rio Grande High School, on Albuquerque’s south side. In the group was 15-year-old Michelle Murguia, who had been invited by a bilingual aide in one of her freshman classes. At first, she found Esquivel terrifying. With his long hair and shaggy beard, he didn’t look like the kind of authority figure who got speaking invitations. 

“It was the first time I heard someone say, ‘Yes, I am undocumented. And I am here to stay,’ ”
—Rio Grande High School student Michelle Murguia

“My first thought was, is he crazy? Why is he saying he’s undocumented?” Murguia, now 23, recalls. “Why is he telling this story? He doesn’t know the people in this room. They could call ICE” — Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

But like Esquivel on his outing in the mountains, Murguia found that fear was quickly followed by overwhelming relief. Maybe spilling your secrets was, in fact, the first step on the path to freedom.   

“It was the first time I heard someone say, ‘Yes, I am undocumented. And I am here to stay,’ ” she says. “When Eduardo came into the room, I was like, I want to do this. I want to be able to tell my story and to empower people not to be afraid.”

Today, eight years after that cathartic conversation, Esquivel is a co-director of the Dream Team and Murguia is field manager. The organization boasts a number of initiatives, but its bedrock is organizing in middle and high schools and on college campuses. Right now, the Dream Team has 13 chapters in schools in Las Cruces, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, providing a system of support that helps students push past shame and isolation. This fills an important gap for educators who know that unmet mental health needs and trauma can impede academic success but rarely have any idea what a given child’s circumstances are — particularly if a student is working hard to keep that background a secret.

Team organizers provide professional development to K-12 teachers and college faculty to educate them about the particular challenges facing immigrant students. Feedback from participants is overwhelmingly positive, group members say, with teachers reporting that their eyes are opened to experiences they would otherwise know nothing about. As these relationships develop, K-12 teachers and administrators often invite Dream Team leaders into their schools. But while an educator may arrange an initial meeting between students and a team member like Esquivel, the school groups are run by student leaders — many of whom go on to become organizers after they graduate. 

Beyond its K-12 outreach, the Dream Team works to eliminate barriers to higher education, health care, basic services and permanent residency for immigrants just like them. Citizenship is a goal, of course, but there are more immediate objectives to increase stability in the community. Last year, for example, group members pushed for and won a state law allowing individuals without permanent U.S. residency to obtain the licenses their nursing, medical or other professional degrees would otherwise qualify them for. 

Early in the pandemic, the Dream Team was one of three nonprofits the city of Albuquerque tapped to help undocumented residents address COVID-related challenges — unemployment, lack of access to tests and health care — and the group raised and distributed tens of thousands of dollars to people not eligible for many public benefits. 

Dream Team members also pushed New Mexico’s immigrant communities to participate in the 2020 census, demanded the release from U.S. detention of a transgender asylum petitioner from Mexico and raised funds to help immigrants denied even basic COVID-19 relief by the Trump administration. 

The grassroots organization, formed by students at the University of New Mexico in 2013, was a response to the creation of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and named for Dreamers — undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children. Esquivel and his colleagues believe the Dream Team, unlike most immigrants-rights groups over the years, is the first such organization in New Mexico led by people who are undocumented or in mixed-status families — in which some members are permanent residents or citizens and others are not.   

Although members put their own New Mexican framework on their activism, the Dream Team is part of a loose network of youth-led groups around the country that broke away from what was then the mainstream immigrant advocacy community some 15 years ago. While those activist organizations had relied on non-immigrant U.S.-born leaders or organizers with legal status, the people behind the new movement felt the time had come for undocumented youth to tell their own stories. 

This identity-focused organizing strategy is a lineal descendant of the gay rights movement of 20 years ago. And many of the new groups share a particular focus on the needs of undocumented LGBTQ youth, who often risk being cut off from the support of their families. Having experienced one kind of coming out as empowering, the queer women of color who founded the Dream Team and its sister organizations recognized the potential of a support system for undocumented people wanting to step out of the shadows. 

“I saw what was possible when you’re supported, and you’re loved, and what it means to not be,” says Esquivel. “I want to make sure other immigrant youth are able to develop these skills, are able to develop a healthy identity, have safe spaces to tell their truth and are able to grow into their own power.”

‘I would cry because I saw little me’

The story of Esquivel’s undocumented journey starts, as it does for many of his Dream Team colleagues, with the takeover of his home city by gangs of drug traffickers. A menacing presence on the streets of Chihuahua City, located some 200 miles south of the U.S. border, men in SUVs paid several visits to the auto repair shop owned by Esquivel’s father, demanding money in exchange for “protection.” After his father refused, the same cars tried to force Esquivel and his mother off the road as she drove him to school.

Somehow, the family got temporary visas and moved into a great-uncle’s garage in Albuquerque. It was less dangerous, but hardly peaceful. The new neighborhood had its own gang problems, and other kids — even Esquivel’s cousins — taunted him about his dark skin and legal status. 

“I don’t know if I understood we were here forever,” Esquivel says. “As a kid, I wondered, is it really any better here?”

Now the Dream Team’s education justice organizer, Esquivel’s younger brother Andres recalls hearing so much teasing about Eduardo’s skin tone that as a 4-year-old he asked his parents if his brother belonged: “Why can’t Lalito go back to Mexico and stay?” he asked, using the family’s nickname for Eduardo.

“I was deeply ashamed to be Mexican, deeply ashamed of my immigration status. I pushed it down. I was determined to learn English with no accent that would identify me, so no one would know.” 
—Eduardo Esquivel

School was a mixed bag. Esquivel connected with a number of teachers of color, including one from Chihuahua who, on finding out that Esquivel was involved in music at church, made sure the boy joined his guitar club. He was identified as gifted, which opened doors to opportunities. He took honors science, learned to weld and competed on a mock trial team at the University of New Mexico School of Law. 

“But there was still a lot of bullying,” he says. “I was deeply ashamed to be Mexican, deeply ashamed of my immigration status. I pushed it down. I was determined to learn English with no accent that would identify me, so no one would know. My identity, it was completely destroyed.” 

Esquivel’s senior year brought two significant experiences. He took a Chicano studies class, where he learned about the Mexican-American War, the U.S. lynching of Mexicans and the of the 1940s, in which servicemen, off-duty police and others in Southern California clashed with young Latinos known as pachucos. 

“I started to understand that [being undocumented] is not my fault, that this is something that happened to me,” he says. “That started breaking down the walls I had built up.”

At the same time, his U.S.-born friends were making plans to attend colleges all over the country. “I was afraid to tell my counselors that I didn’t have a Social Security number,” he says. “So I pretended. I was like, ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll go to California,’ knowing very well that my family could not afford that and I couldn’t even fill out those applications.

“It was worse after I took my ACT. The schools were sending me all these packets in the mail and I couldn’t even feel proud of myself. I just felt really, really shitty.”

The state has policies designed to make college possible for undocumented immigrants, so Esquivel enrolled at the University of New Mexico. His first two years were pretty miserable. He studied biology even though he was far more interested in continuing Chicano studies.

He was in a dark place and coping by self-medicating, Esquivel says, when his dad got a call from someone at his old elementary school, seeking a volunteer to work with fourth graders in music and science. He signed on through a university community engagement initiative and loved it.

“Sometimes,” Esquivel recalls, “I would cry because I saw little me.”

A staff member from the program stopped him one day to invite him to go camping in Chama. “We have a cabin,” the man told him. “All you got to bring is a sleeping bag.”

If a wellness retreat seems like a strange place to birth a hard-edged political movement, it’s important to understand that a near-universal experience among undocumented people is living in constant fear. Even DACA recipients, with their temporary permission to remain in the U.S., can be removed from the program at any time, and their loved ones who didn’t qualify are at constant risk of deportation. Research has to the program’s uncertain future and the lack of a path to permanent residency. 

“Mexican individuals who immigrated to the U.S. before age 13 have a significantly higher risk of developing mood and anxiety disorders than those who do so later in life,” a Fordham University scholar of existing research. “This may be because of their fear of being deported and separated from their family.” 

Add to this, the report continues, an “intense fear of ‘being hunted’ by immigration officials [that] may never disappear, which can significantly affect their long-term mental health.” 

Asked about Esquivel’s leadership, Dream​​ Team members praise his willingness to share — about his struggles with depression, his history of self-medication and his youthful shame about his skin tone — and say it makes them feel safe in opening up.  

Esquivel is particularly gifted at helping young people connect their personal circumstances with the upheaval that pushed their families to abandon their homes, says Felipe Rodriguez, his Dream Team co-director: “Eduardo is an educator by nature.”

‘There are 30 me’s right here’

Like many team members, Murguia was brought to this country as a child to escape drug gang violence. Born just across the border from El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, she was terrorized by drug gangs, or narcos, who conscripted and sometimes killed young children, leaving their bodies in open lots to intimidate people. Her single mother, terrified to leave her three kids home alone while she worked, moved them to Albuquerque when Murguia was 10. 

Talking about the secrets she had bottled up until Esquivel’s visit to her high school, Murguia starts to cry. She had never talked about having to take care of her siblings when her mother’s trauma became overwhelming. She had never told anyone she had been abused. But because of what had happened, she avoided wearing girls’ clothes. 

“What’s wrong with you?” relatives would ask. “Eres macha?” 

Are you butch?  

“I had no one to talk to,” she says. 

Murguia thinks of the secrets as rocks she carries in a bag strapped to her back. Telling his story at her high school, Esquivel lightened her load. And strong as she now feels, she has learned from him to let her colleagues help when she’s overwhelmed.

“Every day I listen to people’s stories, and it’s traumatizing,” says Murguia. “What we do, there is no one else to do it.” 

Now the team’s campaigns manager, Fernanda Banda was born in CuauhtĂ©moc, Chihuahua. Her mother carried her across the border when she was 1. When she was in the eighth grade, her father was deported. Her mother didn’t want her two daughters to be scared, but they were.

Her freshman year at the University of New Mexico, Banda took a deep breath and approached a sociology professor who had given her an assignment that involved identity. She confessed her undocumented status, and the professor suggested she check out the campus Dream Team chapter.

Banda’s family was slow to accept her activism. “They were like, ‘What is this organization making you do? Why are you so bold?’ ” she recalls. “But they adapted. Now my mother gets really proud when she sees me on TV.” 

When Banda first met Esquivel, she says, “the sense of belonging was immediate. It was when I realized, ‘Oh, there are 30 me’s right here.’ “ He is very good at helping youth reframe their experiences, she says, undercutting the popular narrative — especially loud during the Trump years — that undocumented people are criminals.

For Banda, internalizing a different story about her legal status was the first step toward learning to talk to lawmakers and other people in positions of power about the needs of undocumented people. Esquivel, she says, taught her to see storytelling as a source of both personal healing and political strength. 

Linking activists’ health to their effectiveness in the public arena is exactly what Esquivel is seeking to do, he says. “What we are trying to do is build people power,” he explains. “We do that through the process of building identity.” 

A light-bulb moment

Soon after his experience in the mountains, Esquivel was invited to a training at Georgetown University to learn to use his story as an advocacy tool. At the time, the Dream Team was part of United We Dream, a national network of youth groups descended from early, LGBTQ-led efforts. Esquivel took some convincing. 

“I was so scared,” he recalls. “I didn’t know I could travel. I had been told I couldn’t.”

New Mexico residents don’t need immigration documents to get a driver’s license. Using his, Esquivel got on a plane for the first time in his life. When he arrived in Washington, D.C., he walked around in awe, taking in the National Mall and then the Georgetown campus, “which looked like Hogwarts.” 

Just as astounding was the training itself. Calling themselves the UndocuHoyas, the university’s organizers were educating faculty on barriers immigrant students face getting into and succeeding in college. It was every bit as stunning as hearing his new colleagues speak their truths in the woods, except these students were talking to authority figures. 

The Georgetown organizers weren’t telling their stories to bond or to heal, he quickly noticed. His hosts were framing things in a way that would illustrate, to affluent professors presumably insulated from experiences like his own, the practical realities of being undocumented. It was effective in its context, Esquivel says, but he couldn’t quite see how it would work in New Mexico, with its distinct history and demographics. 

The state has a very different posture toward its immigrant population than many other places, starting with the tenor of the public discourse. While officials in neighboring states demonize immigrants, many elected leaders in New Mexico talk about the contributions immigrants make to the state’s civic and economic health. 

According to the , as of December 2021, some 5,400 New Mexico residents had DACA status and an estimated 9,000 more were considered “immediately eligible,” whether they have applied or not. There are more undocumented youth — it’s unclear how many — who do not qualify.

All told, the nonprofit estimates there are 60,000 undocumented state residents. Using the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number provided by the IRS to people who can’t get a Social Security number, they pay nearly $68 million in state and local taxes a year. 

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tapped Dream Team members to serve on a racial justice council she convened in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. And before being appointed the first Native American secretary of the interior, Democrat Deb Haaland had represented Albuquerque in Congress. During her time in office, she invited the group to numerous conferences and public events to share, among other topics, how Dreamers fill jobs in health care, education and other short-staffed fields in the state.

New Mexico’s architecture, food and tourist industry all celebrate the state’s Latino and Indigenous roots. One in 10 New Mexicans are immigrants, and one in nine have an immigrant parent. The thousands of residents who have naturalized over the last decade — mostly women from Mexico — constitute enough of a voting bloc to swing tight local or state elections.   

When Esquivel got home from Georgetown, he took an anti-racism workshop put on by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, which offers training throughout the country, and a light bulb went on. “That shattered me,” he says. “It was like ‘The Matrix.’ It was fully life-changing.”

Suddenly, he saw a relationship between the U.S. war on drugs and the violence that had driven his family — and those of Murguia, Rodriguez and countless other Dream Team members — from their homes in a different light. In Esquivel’s new understanding, neither he nor his parents had initiated a shameful chain of events.

A different kind of coming out

In 2001, when the Dream Act was introduced, a young, undocumented LGBTQ woman from Chicago was scheduled to testify before Congress. Then, the 9/11 attacks upended everything, and Tania Unzueta never got the chance to speak. But a movement had been born, led in part by who saw the gay rights movement as a model. 

Nationwide, an estimated 267,000 undocumented people identify as LGBTQ, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA. Approximately 81,000 are Dreamers. In the eyes of many of their families and neighbors, coming out as undocumented is just as taboo as coming out as queer. 

Undocumented people, the new leaders among them believed, could benefit from their own coming-out process. Not only does one person speaking up embolden others, but personal stories are a powerful tool.

Soon after 9/11, administrators at a Santa Fe high school began towing cars belonging to undocumented students who, because they lacked driver’s licenses, could not get parking permits, Esquivel recalls. Activists fought to change state law so any New Mexico resident could drive legally. On the heels of that victory, they succeeded in winning access to the higher education system and to state financial aid.

When President Barack Obama authorized DACA in 2012, the group that would become the Dream Team was born. New Mexico immigration rights activists held a series of clinics to give prospective applicants legal and financial help; signing up for the program is complicated and expensive, and the status must be renewed every two years. As of March 2020, some 1.8 million people meet the eligibility requirements, but just 800,000 are enrolled, according to the Center for American Progress. 

In addition to sponsoring chapters in different parts of the state, the organization hosts frequent training sessions for educators, an effort spearheaded by Andres Esquivel. He uses a curriculum he and his brother developed that mixes material from the National United We Dream network with an anti-racist framework Eduardo Esquivel created to tailor the approach for New Mexicans. 

Two of the group’s workshops are now a regular part of Albuquerque Public Schools’s teacher training. In the future, Dream Team leaders want to be able to offer educators continuing education credits — something they believe would draw more participants.

In an era when school boards are under tremendous public pressure to prove they are not exposing students to the graduate-level academic framework of Critical Race Theory, it may sound improbable that a network of undocumented activists is invited into K-12 schools. But Dream Team organizers are typically welcomed by school administrators, Esquivel says. 

“They see the issues, but they don’t know what to do,” Esquivel says. “Once they understand what we do, they want us there.” 

Holding feet to the fire

Jocelyn Barrera came to the United States with her mother when she was 3. The week before starting middle school in Santa Fe, she was finally supposed to meet her father, who was on his way to see her in person after years of FaceTiming. 

“He was in El Paso, and then in one quick second everything changed,” Barrera says. “He stopped calling
. Someone had reported him.” 

His deportation scared Barrera into withdrawing from lots of everyday activities. She had never told anyone what had happened to her father for fear of exposing herself and the other undocumented members of her mixed-status family. Joining the Dream Team brought her out of her shell.  

Now 22, Barrera works with students in four Santa Fe schools and is trying to build relationships with youth in two other communities, Española and the Pueblo of Pojoaque.

In February, Dream Team members were among outside the New Mexico School for the Arts. A poster in a display about missing and murdered Indigenous women that had been created for Native American Heritage Month had been defaced, the letters rearranged to spell out a slur. Students were angry at what they saw as administrators’ tepid response to a pattern of racist incidents. 

Coincidentally, the 25 to 30 students carrying banners and posters showed up outside the school while a staff training on cultural responsiveness was happening inside. An administrator came out to try to convince the students that the session was aimed at addressing their concerns. 

Then, the consultant running the session stepped outside for a break. Hearing the protesters’ concerns, he volunteered to facilitate a conversation with the staff inside. Students and faculty emerged with several agreements: a public apology from administrators; a safe room reserved for Native American students; the hiring of more people of color; and the creation of a garden commemorating lost Indigenous women, among other measures.    

Dream Team members were pleased, says Barrera: “But we let the principal know we would be there every Friday with more and more people if they don’t do it.”

“We can’t become one of those organizations that have the same leadership for 20 years.”
—Eduardo Esquivel

‘Building a better world’

In a few months, Esquivel will turn 28. Rodriguez is the same age, and the two have been talking about stepping down in the next few years to ensure that the organization remains truly youth-led. Because student chapter members often stay with the Dream Team and go on to organize others, the group has a built-in pipeline of future leaders, he says. 

“For me and Felipe, it’s not much longer we’re going to be here,” Esquivel says. “We can’t become one of those organizations that have the same leadership for 20 years.”

When he leaves, Esquivel wants to go back to school to earn a teaching license and a principal’s credential. He plans to teach science at a charter school the Dream Team will open next fall with the , an organization that helps people open schools in Native American communities. NACA stands for Native American Community Academy, which operates .

Like the Dream Team, the school network prizes a healthy sense of identity and holistic wellness for students and families. Many undocumented Latinos come from Indigenous communities or are not far removed from them, and the two organizations have had a close relationship since the Dream Team’s early days.

“We share a lot of the same oppressors, we’re very connected to the land,” says Esquivel. “For us, it is important for our youth to develop an indigenized identity.”

After several years of planning, the new K-5 school is scheduled to open in August in the city’s International District, a densely populated, diverse neighborhood that is home to immigrants from many countries, not just Latin America. The school will start with 60 students in kindergarten and first and second grades. 

One goal is to see what happens when an entire staff starts with the same vision and set of beliefs, and is able to help younger immigrant and Indigenous students grow up with pride and a sense of empowerment.    

“I don’t believe anyone accomplishes anything on their own,” says Esquivel. “I want as many people as possible to join us in building a better world.” 

The , derived from numerous sources that track immigration, details these students’ challenges and their impact on districts. Their number, difficult to ascertain on a national basis, represents a fraction of the 491,000 children under age 18 who arrived at the southern border in that same time period and remained in the country with unresolved immigration status in early 2020, according to RAND. The youngest among them were ineligible for school while some of the oldest never enrolled.

Roughly 75 percent of the children in the RAND study landed in just 10 states, including California, Texas, Florida, New York and Louisiana. Their arrival prompted the need for additional hires: RAND calculated that seven states would need at least 2,000 more teachers and other personnel to maintain student-staff ratios.

The need was even more acute in Los Angeles County and Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston: Each would need 1,000 additional educators, the organization concluded.

RAND researchers said they decided to study this population in part because their numbers have grown in recent years—and because their challenges are unique.

“Their needs are fundamentally different from those of many other immigrant children, and they are part of the future of the United States,” said senior policy researcher Shelly Culbertson. “They also have resilience and hopes and dreams—and by federal law they have a right to a public education.”

Despite a in 1982 that prohibited discrimination against students based on their immigration status, many young newcomers have been unlawfully turned away or shunted into inferior programs by school administrators who fear they will not graduate.

Oliver Torres, senior outreach paralegal at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has fought for the educational rights of newcomer children, said anti-immigration laws proposed and enacted across the country in recent years have had a chilling effect on many families, discouraging their participation in all elements of public life, including school.

Torres, a former English as a second language teacher, said new immigrants are so focused on simply reuniting with their loved ones — especially in the case of children separated from their parents at the border — that education has become less of a priority, a phenomenon he called “heartbreaking.”

Looking back to the years covered in the RAND study, he recalled the case of a 17-year-old boy from Guatemala held for more than six months at the controversial in Florida. The teen, who was only allowed outside for one hour a day, said he was pressured by staff to take medication to quell the emotional outbursts he suffered after being repeatedly told he would be reunited with his father only to see that promise broken. By the time of his release, the boy was too distressed to tend to his education.

“The idea of going to a two-hour night school class for English a couple of times a week seemed overwhelming,” Torres said. “It was such a level of trauma, that it was clearly going to take a significant amount of time to heal. All he wanted was just not to cry every day.”

Two districts serving new arrivals well

The teen’s experience echoed that of many undocumented children who have fanned out across the country in recent years. RAND, in addition to its nationwide view, also homes in on Jefferson Parish Schools in Louisiana and Oakland Unified School District in California, both of which have served these children for years. It lauded each for their admissions processes and for the academic support their immigrant students receive, including referrals for outside assistance.

RAND also praised the districts’ efforts to address students’ social-emotional needs, but administrators from both point to numerous ongoing challenges even prior to the pandemic, which caused a massive drop in enrollment among newly arrived students.

Veronica Garcia-Montejano, principal at Oakland International High School, a campus designed for newcomers, said her concerns for her students expand well beyond academic goals to their fundamental needs, including food and housing. Many are transient, moving between family, friends or the foster care system.

“They have a huge hurdle to overcome in developing that relationship with the person who is caring for them,” she said. “And if you are not an unaccompanied minor but haven’t seen your parent in years, you are in the same situation.”

Many newcomers are pulled into the workforce to manage financial obligations: Some have to pay back the smugglers who brought them to America, send remittances home, support themselves and contribute to their household, Garcia-Montejano said.

Her current students include two brothers, ages 16 and 18, living on their own. They have to balance their studies with earning enough money to pay rent.

“They are all they have,” she said.

During COVID-19, some students have qualified for rent relief but others have less formal agreements and are unable to seek official help, Garcia-Montejano said.

“We all have to assume the students are coming to the classroom with complex trauma, which presents itself in many ways, from overstimulation to withdrawal,” she said. “The most important thing for the adults in the building to do is to begin developing positive relationships with these students.”

Deborah Dantin, principal of Alice Birney Elementary School in Metairie, Louisiana, part of Jefferson Parish Schools, said one of her biggest struggles is in communicating with parents who do not speak English. Roughly 90 percent of her newcomer students and their families speak Spanish.

“We have lots of people on campus who speak Spanish, but it’s not the same as a direct call with a teacher or principal,” Dantin said. “We have someone translating, but it’s complicated, confusing and long.”

The communication barrier extends to the students themselves. Dantin would love to have a Spanish-speaking educator inside every classroom but until then, her school must employ other means to serve these children: Teachers sometimes use supplemental materials in Spanish to give students the support they need to make the leap to English.

And her school also offers dual-language classes for native English speakers and newcomers in younger grades. The offering helps Spanish-speakers read and write in their native tongue, a skill that will help them learn English because literacy is a transferable skill.

‘Don’t think of us as aliens’

Sua Ramos, a 17-year-old senior at Oakland International High School, remembers those early days trying to adapt to a new culture. Ramos, who identifies as non-binary, fled Honduras with their family after sixth grade rather than risk injury or death because of gang-related shootouts, common in their community. It was a difficult transition: they left friends and family behind and could barely utter a word in English.

“It was like I was on a different planet,” Sua said. “I didn’t know what the teacher was teaching. I was so confused. But as I got to know people, they helped me. I learned English little by little.”

RAND, in an extensive, expensive wish list, recommends the federal government improve the tracking of these students and create a records-sharing agreement with the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras similar to the one already in place with Mexico.

It says schools should work closely with local resettlement groups, federal and state agencies to help families access social, medical and legal services — and that the federal government should provide schools with additional funding for these students on a rolling basis as the money often lags their arrival.

RAND’s estimate includes those children who immigrated to the United States between Oct. 1, 2016 and Sept. 30, 2019 and was derived using data from spring 2020, just prior to the pandemic-related school closures that began in mid-March.

It combined three sources of data to formulate an “informed estimate” of where these children live. The first came from the , which had already examined where earlier groups of immigrants settled throughout the country. The second was the , which kept records on where unaccompanied children were placed with sponsors at the state and county level and the third was which gathers data on immigration proceedings throughout the country, collecting records from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

RAND found more than three-quarters of children who arrived with their families were under the age of 12 while 74 percent who came without a parent were between 15 and 17 years old.

Excluded from their study are the thousands of new immigrants who have crossed the border in the years since. Though the flow slowed during the pandemic, it skyrocketed upon news of Biden’s election. Persistent crime, political chaos and ongoing economic catastrophe, sometimes made worse by natural disasters, also played a role.

Some who were part of a massive encampment in Del Rio, Texas, have been admitted to the United States in recent weeks. Their arrival came around the same time that America welcomed thousands of newcomers from the Middle East, a trend that is expected to continue: Biden seeks to bring to the country through 2022.

The president just introduced new rules to for undocumented people brought to the United States as children and plans to admit next year, a figure that will no doubt include a sizable number of school-aged newcomers.

Ramos, the 17-year-old student from Oakland, hopes native-born Americans will reconsider old prejudices about the new arrivals.

“I’d ask them to be patient with us,” they said. “It’s not like we are dumb or something. It’s just there’s a language barrier. Give us a chance. Don’t think of us as aliens. We are people just like them who want a better life.”