Immigration enforcement creeps under the schoolhouse door

A series of recent fatal incidents involving ICE operations has renewed national attention on immigration enforcement. While much of the public conversation has centered on the individual cases, educators have spent years documenting another consequence that often receives far less attention: what heightened immigration enforcement means for students, classrooms, and schools.

For more than four decades, public schools have been required to educate every child, regardless of immigration status, under the Supreme Court's decision in Plyler v. Doe. That right has increasingly come under political scrutiny, including from U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who’s repeatedly called for the Supreme Court to revisit Plyler and introduced legislation aimed at limiting its reach. Roy, who came within a handful of votes of becoming the Republican nominee for Texas attorney general, is one of several elected officials who have argued the decision should be overturned. That legal right hasn't changed, but a growing body of research suggests that many immigrant families become less likely to send their children to school or engage with educators when immigration enforcement intensifies. The result isn't limited to anxiety for individual students; it can affect attendance, classroom engagement, student mental health, and the relationships schools work so hard to build with families.

Researchers have been documenting those effects for years. Brookings found that heightened immigration enforcement is associated with increased absenteeism, lower student engagement, and greater emotional stress, even among children who are U.S. citizens but have immigrant family members. The American Immigration Council similarly found that enforcement actions create ripple effects throughout school communities, discouraging families from participating in school events, communicating with teachers, or seeking services they are legally entitled to receive.

More recent research points in the same direction. A K-12 Dive report highlighted new findings showing increases in chronic absenteeism following expanded immigration enforcement efforts, with educators reporting that some families kept children home out of fear even when enforcement activity hadn’t occurred near their schools. A peer-reviewed study published through the National Institutes of Health reached similar conclusions, finding that immigration enforcement policies can disrupt attendance, increase stress, and negatively affect children's educational experiences over time. This research, taken together, paints a consistent picture: when families fear immigration enforcement, schools often see the effects long before policymakers do.

For educators, those findings are hardly surprising. Teachers are often the first to notice when students begin missing class, withdraw from classroom discussions, or show signs of increased anxiety. School counselors, social workers, and campus administrators frequently become the bridge between schools and families trying to navigate uncertainty. As the Education Writers Association has reported, educators around the country have described parents becoming reluctant to answer school phone calls, attend conferences, or complete school paperwork because they worry that interactions with public institutions could expose their families to immigration enforcement.

Those concerns have become even more visible this year. Reporting from the Orlando Sentinel found that some districts have increased communication with families about student rights and school procedures as immigration enforcement activity has intensified, while teachers described spending more time helping students process fear and uncertainty before instruction can even begin. Similar reporting from EdCircuit found that educators are increasingly balancing their instructional responsibilities with efforts to reassure students and maintain stable classroom environments during periods of heightened anxiety.

In Texas, those challenges are compounded by issues schools are already facing. Districts continue to grapple with teacher shortages, student mental health needs, declining enrollment, and difficult budget decisions, all while working to improve attendance after years of disruption. Because Texas school funding is tied in part to student attendance, when students stay home out of fear, the impact extends beyond individual families and can affect the resources available to entire campuses. Texas demographers have estimated that classrooms have lost 75,000 mostly Hispanic students in the last year. 

The burden also falls on educators. Teachers can't simply pause instruction every time a student disappears for several days or weeks. Instead, they spend additional time helping students catch up, coordinating with counselors, reconnecting with families, and supporting classmates who are trying to understand what is happening in their own communities. Those responsibilities rarely show up in policy debates, but they have become an increasingly common part of teaching.

This isn't an argument about whether immigration laws should be enforced; it's an acknowledgment that enforcement decisions can have consequences that reach into classrooms, regardless of where those operations take place. Public schools remain one of the few places where every child is guaranteed an education, and when fear keeps students from walking through those doors or fully participating once they're inside, the effects are felt by teachers, classmates, and entire school communities. 

As policymakers continue debating immigration policy, the educational consequences deserve to be part of that conversation. Attendance, academic achievement, student well-being, and family engagement are closely connected, and the research increasingly shows that immigration enforcement can influence each of them in ways that extend far beyond the immediate target of an operation.

For readers who want to follow this issue more closely, ProPublica has launched a reporting initiative examining how deportation policies affect children, families, and schools. You can sign up to attend here.