By Sonia Banker
Only a few years after the pandemic, young kids in this country are seeing a whole new disruption to their learning: immigration raids.
One of the Trump administration’s first actions after assuming office was to rescind the Biden administration’s guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which limited enforcement activity in “sensitive locations” like schools and churches.
Since then, immigration raids have escalated — often under questionable pretenses. This spring, immigration agents tried to enter two elementary schools in Los Angeles. At the door, agents said they wanted to determine students’ well-being and claimed to have authorization from the children’s caretakers.
Administrators denied them entry — and when they spoke with caretakers later, they learned that agents had lied about receiving permission. “I’m absolutely incensed that DHS agents would try to enter elementary schools,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA). “These are children who should be learning to read and write, not cowering in fear of being ripped away from their homes.”
Unfortunately, schools are no longer a safe haven for our students. You can imagine the trauma and disruption that comes from armed agents entering schools and removing students. But these raids will also have long-term implications on learning outcomes, mental health, and even school funding for children enrolled in public schools nationwide.
And we’re seeing that now in rising rates of absenteeism.
In June, Stanford professor Thomas Dee published a groundbreaking report detailing the relationship between raids and school absences. Focusing on recent raids in California’s Central Valley region, Dee studied attendance data from over three years at five nearby school districts. Dee was able to correlate raids with a 22 percent increase in student absenteeism, particularly affecting youngest learners.
In the weeks following Dee’s report, media outlets from across the county — from New York to Denver and Chicago — reported similar patterns of immigration raids leading to increased student absences. Fearful of raids, families across the nation have opted to keep their children home.
In many states, including California, school funding is determined by average daily attendance. This means that the more students miss school, the less that school will receive going forward. So when a raid forces a student to miss school, it doesn’t just impact their own learning — it also means fewer resources for their classmates, teachers, and their entire district.
This threatens the public school ecosystem, inflicting long-term harm on a generation of students already recovering from pandemic-era setbacks. “Absences are both more common for everybody, but they are also more extreme,” said Jacob Kirksey, an associate professor of education policy at Texas Tech. Raids “can essentially create what we found from COVID — this generation of students who have a patently different experience with schooling.”
Importantly, students and educators still have rights. For instance, a school district cannot ask about a student’s citizenship or immigration status as proof of that student’s residency. Students have the right to withhold this information, and schools may not prohibit that student from enrollment if they do not disclose it.
You can explore your legal protections as a student or an educator by visiting MySchoolMyRights.com, a website published by the ACLU where you’ll find clear, accessible guidance on what ICE can or can’t do in schools.
Over half of American voters believe schools should not be touched by immigration raids. They understand that ICE raids on schools don’t make communities safer. They make classrooms emptier and schools more vulnerable to funding cuts.
We must advocate on behalf of those students by demanding transparency and passing policies that limit ICE access to protect our students and families. We owe all kids a safe haven at school and the freedom to learn without fear.
Sonia Banker is a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Excuses are like assholes they all stink! What part of illegal, don’t you understand? You want them to wait around to follow the bus home? Never know what they,ll find there.
Deborah Coffey says
There are just no words to describe how disgusting the entire Trump administration truly is. But, if we elect a Jeffrey Epstein friend, a convicted felon, a convicted tax fraud, a world class liar, a complete and total racist, a malignant narcissist, a guy that pardons insurrectionists and other despicable criminals like himself, as well as a very stupid, uneducated man…what should we have expected? He’s got his own secret, masked police force now. Will we fight him or let him continue to destroy our beautiful country?
MM says
Inhumane and Disgraceful.
Jackson says
Yeah, TORTURING people and mistreating people is what makes America great, isn’t it?
Abandoning the rule of law doesn’t make us safer.
We are rapidly becoming everything we fought AGAINST in WWII and it is the Republican party taking us there. We are not greater, we are diminshed in every possible way in the eyes of the world.
Ralph Venuti says
let the do there job, if they need to enter schools stand aside. If you are violently protesting you should be arrested and prosecuted.
Laurel says
This has already gone too far. Trump doesn’t give a damn about children, that has been made abundantly clear with his “right” to burst into teen girls’ dressing rooms because he owns the pageant, or his long friendship with Epstein, or his obscene comments about his own daughter. That’s one person, though. What is really disturbing to me is, Republicans seem to be okay with all this! Where have y’all gone?
I can’t even imagine what it’s like in schools now. Children in fear of disease. Children in fear of shooters. Children in fear of being kidnapped by masked men with guns. This is Trump showing us all how he can just disrupt all our lives, bully us around, and his minions capitulating, and joining his craziness. They are willing to let this happen to all our kids. It’s unconscionable.
This absurd behavior needs to stop now. I cannot believe this is the country I grew up in, can you?
Cathy M Poturny says
Another severely one-sided opinion. To begin;
Schools are not a safe haven. The entire establishment has been corrupted. Teachers have overstepped their responsibilities with ideaologies that are not in the syllabus, insulating impressionable kids from their parents, teaching opinion and not history.
As for absenteeism, get the facts straight. The numbers are DOWN according to the DOE’s 2025 study https://www.ed.gov/teaching-and-administration/supporting-students/chronic-absenteeism#:~:text=Chronic%20absenteeism%20%E2%80%94%20defined%20as%20students,schools%20and%20communities%20increase%20attendance And a separate watchdog group https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/lingering-absence-in-public-schools-tracking-post-pandemic-chronic-absenteeism-into-2024/
Here is another concept. If the parents are here illegally, the children are here illegally as well. Sad, indeed. However, who is absorbing the per child expense in the schools? If absenteeism is a systemic issue, where are the administrators, counselors and teachers? If parent or parents are caught in an ICE net, what would you suggest be done with the kids?
You end with freedom without fear. I agree but is it really about the students of the funding thresholds.
So tired of opinion op eds… I would value and consider your position more if I felt you were leaving your sensitivities and heartstrings out of the article.
Bill says
Caution: inaccurate comment. See: “ICE Arrests in Florida of Migrants Without Criminal Records Surged 450% in June.” Do not use this site to spread disinformation. Thanks.–FL]
This is a typical leftist twisted article. Ice is not going into schools. Ice is not chasing illegal immigrants unless they have additional felonies against them. Let’s keep the record straight.
Marek says
It is really going way too far . Hopefully someone is going to be accountable. And lying ICE agents
should be fired.
Ugly ending says
Modern day Nazi police with a different name!
Juan says
Republicans are sick and pathetic! Murikkka cant afford a suicide hotline anymore but Canada made a us toll free one for anyone who needs help! The child rapist in Washington should be removed asap!
DaleL says
Children in public schools are already at risk because of the risk of an active shooting. As a result, many if not all public schools have active shooter drills and lock downs. The students are minors and the school is their temporary guardian.
ICE agents are armed and frequently disguised behind masks. I would hope that if ICE agents arrive unannounced and without a search warrant, the school officials would insure the safety of the students. That includes their mental well being. They should: 1. Refuse the ICE agents entry. 2. Initiate a lock down. 3. Contact local police through 911. 4. Notify the school’s attorney. 5. Notify the local news organizations. 6. Notify the students’ parents and/or guardians.
This sort of activity would traumatize all the students, whether they are natural borne citizens or undocumented immigrants. It cannot be tolerated. Not only that, the examples in the story are ELEMENTARY schools. It appears that the ICE agents were attempting to kidnap some of the children!!!!
PaulT says
Of course government agents shouldn’t be raiding schools or hospitals or targeting churches. Neither should they be arresting immigrants pursuing the legalization of their status at immigration appointments and immigration courts.
But Stephen Miller has set a target of a million deportations by years end so ICE ‘agents’, who hide behind masks and are not required to display ID badges or wear uniforms, have to arrest whoever they can find in order to meet their quota’s, disregarding the work authorizations or green cards of those who look like immigrants’.
And since they quickly ran out of the ‘Violent Criminals and Rapists’ who Miller and Trump insisted were terrorizing us, now they’re raiding ethnic food markets and restaurants and the casual labor pools. They’re culling meat packers, farm workers and restauran and hotrl employees who do the essential but unpleasant jobs which American citizens won’t ever sign up for. Because this isn’t about what’s good for the country, it’s about ethnic cleansing by removing hard working brown and dark skinned people because they have ‘invaded’ what Mr Miller considers should be a white nation.
Skibum says
It would be one thing if the federal ICE officers were following ethical, truthful and appropriate guidelines and acting when they had reasonable cause to believe a specific individual was in violation of federal law. But that is NOT what has been happening! Their orders from above are resulting in anyone with dark skin, even U.S. born American citizens, to be yanked off of streets, out of cars, out of churches, out of schools and universities, even out of courtrooms where immigration proceedings are scheduled… all because drumph’s racist Steven Miller has ordered the widespread targeting of ANYONE who even looks like they might be an immigrant.
It is so much worse than what Dennis Rathsam is believing and supporting, because these people who are being targeted are not being allowed the due process that they have a right to. Many of them, including children, are being locked up in detention centers, moved around to areas far from home, denied legal representation or contact with their families, and loaded onto planes in secret to be flown to foreign destinations without ANY opportunity to present their cases in front of a judge or immigration hearings official to plead their case why they should not be deported legally.
Dennis may be okay with this Nazi stormtrooper type of unconstitutional, completely unethical type of activity being promoted by the convicted felon-in-chief and his racist underlings, but that just says more about his own moral and ethical lapses for suggesting this abandonment of our nation’s Constitution is somehow an acceptable way for federal law enforcement to behave when I know full well it is not, nor has it ever been in the past… not until the convicted felon threw out all previous norms and constitutional guarantees to ensure the end he wants justifies any means to accomplish it.
Pogo says
@Wait for it
… as criminals will start impersonating this behavior — complete with disguises; witnesses will be shocked and confused because they’ve become inured to thugs coming and going at will.
I’m glad I’ve already served most of my time, to see this come to pass is becoming a waking nightmare.
Laurel says
Trump’s own “brown shirts.” Beyond disgusting.
Capt Bill Hanagan says
We can have political debate, we can have different opinions, even wildly different opinions that seem impossible to reconcile. Those on the left could often stand to be a bit more ‘realistic’ and those on the right to be a bit more empathetic.
BUT if you stand in support of terrorizing children, for any reason, I have nothing to say to you
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Completely unsurprising that the pedophiles would be ok with abducting children.
Sherry says
Cathy and all other inhumane Maga members. . . don’t you realize just how traumatizing it is to “ALL” the children to be subjected to gestapo styled arrests happening in schools.? Saying to leave sensitivities and heartstrings out of discussions of children is nothing short of despicable and abhorrent! “ALL” children are precious regardless of their skin color or immigration status! You should all be incredibly ashamed for your horrific attitudes!
ICEsupporter says
In reading the comments, most can certainly pick out the people who moved here from the northern blue states and South Florida. It’s blatantly obvious you, too, are part of the problem and are the very same people who complained and moved away from the political firestorms and failed policies of the larger cities, only to revive them in our once small town. Life was so much better before you hypocrites moved here.
I’d gladly stand at the school doors and hold them open for the ICE agents to remove every illegal who is a drain on our economy. Maybe we should have a separate funding account for those who want ILLEGALS in America, because I refuse to pay anything out of my taxes for people who don’t belong here. And for all you sympathetic supporters of illegal immigration, you go right ahead and fund the ignorance out of your pocket. We wouldn’t have this problem if your political party hadn’t opened the borders. So, go ahead and bitch, but whether you accept it or not, you’re the minority and your party has no leadership. You unhappy, pathetic people.
Sherry says
BTW. . . @ Cathy and other Maga heartless people. . . why shouldn’t schools be a “safe haven”???? That is where children spend a large part of their lives!!! Should they NOT feel safe and secure during those hours?
Just what kind of monstrous thinking is that? Please allow your heart and mind to feel and think beyond the 24/7 Fox BS propaganda. Where is your humanity?
Billy says
Of course it’s a backwards article like all Democrats. It should read , keep the illegals out of our schools!
Own it says
There’s a solution to all this terror, remove the orange stain and his cult! Or double down for more pain and suffering!
The dude says
MAGA morons cheering the pardons of violent criminals like the Jan sixers, then hoping that masked thugs raid classrooms and whisk children away in unmarked vehicles is totally on brand and peak MAGA.
These people are truly sick.
Burn it down says
Capture those children and send them off to…. Who cares right the worlds largest pedophile will take good care! Sick and sad! Hows the forced price increases going for ya? Recession yet? republicans are evil and pathetic! Time to burn down the corrupt oligarchy and start over! Humans first!
WouldntYouLikeToKnow says
I am floored with the realization of how many despicable racists live all around us in this town and country as a whole. At least now the morons are outing themselves with their names attached to their hate. They will come to regret that.
JimboXYZ says
We don’t know the entire background story for the reason(s) ICE was there ? Maybe the illegals as parents were arrested while their children were at school ? And then that’s a matter of making sure a child isn’t left unattended at home wondering when their parent was going to or if they were ever going to come back to that home & children. And if that is the case, are the administrators doing more harm than good for their non-compliance ? Unfortunately there are situations where law enforcement needs to take custody of a child or multiple children in various scenarios. Just me, back in 2018, DCF raided an apartment complex that I lived in Yulee/Fernandina Beach, FL (Nassau county). Just imagine the DCF & Sheriff’s Office banging on your door at sunrise looking for children that never lived in the apartment. Parent(s) providing a false address as their residence ? Only because adults in trouble with the law have never lied about a current address ?
If the children are Biden-Harris illegals, the absenteeism is costing taxpayers whatever the daily rate it is that a public school is paid out for children without absenteeism ?
Laurel says
This Ulta white county is so disappointing! Y’all act like there are migrants around every corner, here, and they are all after your money! What foolishness!
You don’t like that they are hard workers, do you? You don’t like that they actually add to our economy, do you? Makes the lazy and prejudice look bad, right? Yes it does.
You Republicans claim you’re not bigots, but one commenter stated that our previous Presidential spokeswoman, an intelligent and kind woman, was “Buckwheat” and had hair like a “toilet bowl brush.”
Yeah, we know precisely where y’all are coming from. You are what you are, and removing nonwhite people won’t change that.
Go ahead, keep supporting your felon and crying how dark people are “criminals.” We know what you really mean.
Sherry says
@ice supporter and others of the same ilk. . . “You” have NO idea what in the world you are writing about! To state that all those who live in Florida that still maintain empathy for others and live in “factual reality” must be from “blue states” is beyond myopic and ridiculous!
Many who comment from a factual and compassionate point of view on Flaglerlive regularly are true Florida “natives” for generations. Speaking for myself and my husband, we were both born and raised in Florida and our ancestors were proud Floridians for many, many generations. But, then again those were the happy, positive days of “Southern Hospitality” when no one was a stranger and there was always room at the table for one more.
It is truly heartbreaking to see the state we were raised in become one of the leading states in fascism and “fear and hate” of everything and everyone who is not “white and Christian”! We are no longer proud of where we were born!!!
Bob croce says
Good and go and get the illegals out wherever they are at School hospitals churches who cares they broke the law and they are using resources that are meant for US citizens not people who broke our laws. I believe a majority of people feel this way but keep it to themselves. Take a poll I bet it will show that American citizens will agree. You won’t post this on your one sided liberal site. But it’s happening so get used to it.
Laurel says
Bob: Your buddy in the White House employed illegals, and got mad at Epstein for “stealing” his under-aged” masseuses.
“Donald Trump’s businesses have a history of employing undocumented workers, including at his golf courses, where they were employed for years before being let go. This practice has drawn criticism, especially given Trump’s public stance on immigration and illegal immigration enforcement. WETA, Wikipedia” Assist AI generated.
Now, Bob, please explain to me why that’s okay with you. How about you, Jimbo? You don’t like these Trump employees used before, and during, the “Biden-Harris immigrants” era?
Just keep laundering lies to suit your prejudices.