School Officials Wrestle With How To Protect Students From Ice

School leaders used to dealing with shrinking budgets, staff shortages, chronic absenteeism and lackluster test scores are getting consumed by a Donald Trump-driven challenge: ICE raids that are driving students out of the classroom.

And it goes well beyond Minneapolis.

Schools across the country are dealing with the impacts of the Trump administration’s mass deportation operations such as students being detained on the way to and from school or getting caught in the crossfire of tear gas clouds and families going into hiding.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have stopped short of entering school grounds to conduct enforcement activities. But the Trump administration last year reversed a long-standing policy that protected “sensitive spaces” like schools from immigration enforcement actions. Teachers unions are fighting to reinstate the previous policy, filing an emergency motion last week, while a coalition of Minnesota districts filed its own suit.

In the absence of legal protections, district officials overseeing schools in areas of high immigration enforcement say they have created their own policies and procedures for how to manage interactions with ICE officers while continuing to educate their students.

Educators fear these immigration raids will have long-term consequences similar to the Covid-19 pandemic like increased student absences and anxiety and declining academic performance. They have already seen signs of this, with early data showing steep attendance drops despite their best efforts to keep students in their brick-and-mortar classrooms.

“I think in public education, every leader is dealing with this, and every single leader is having difficulty,” said Misty Her, superintendent for Fresno Unified School District.

During the first seven months of Trump’s second term, ICE arrests in California’s Central Valley where Her’s district is located increased by 58 percent compared to the same time period the year prior. The region also experienced a 22 percent increase in student absences coinciding with raids, according to a Harvard University study.

“Some days I am really questioning, am I able to keep [students] safe?” Her said.

Gustavo Balderas served as a superintendent for the Beaverton School District in Oregon when Trump’s immigration raids began in nearby Portland last fall. Balderas, who stepped down from his position last month, remembers the first time Trump was in office and how that caused his district to move fast to try to address the concerns of Latino families.

“This is a whole other level that's very extreme, that's very traumatic,” he said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told POLITICO that “ICE is not going to schools to arrest children—we are protecting children.”

“Criminals are no longer be able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense. If a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety. But this has not happened.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement “the Trump Administration is creating safer communities for all Americans, including school children, by removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities."

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota in recent months heightened safety concerns of students and their families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and spiked absenteeism. Those concerns were magnified by the detainment of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old student from the Columbia Heights Public School District. The White House recently announced an end to its immigration surge in the region where two American citizens were killed last month. 

Stacie L. Stanley, superintendent for Saint Paul Public Schools, Minnesota’s second-largest district, said it had approved a resolution for how to manage interactions with ICE agents since the Trump policy change.

With the resolution, the district directed staff members to understand the difference between a judicial and an administrative warrant. Only a judicial warrant authorizes an arrest or search on property.

A recent amendment to the resolution reaffirmed restrictions around federal agents interviewing students or staff as well as staff providing information on students or families without a proper warrant. It also requires the superintendent to provide annual training for all staff on these protocols and their responsibilities.

The district hasn’t had any agents come onto the property, but a van transporting students with special needs was stopped by ICE agents in January, Stanley said.

This month, legislation that would have codified these efforts was blocked by Minnesota House Republicans. The bill would ban agents from entering public and charter schools without a judicial warrant and make entry contingent on a superintendent or district administrator’s approval to only areas where students aren’t present.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has also focused on the Durham, North Carolina, area. Durham Public Schools has had this type of guidance for staff members in effect since last January, said Superintendent Anthony Lewis.

Amendments to a 2017 policy that broadly focused on investigations and arrests added specific language on law enforcement only being permitted access to confidential student information with a judicial warrant or a court issued subpoena. The policy also directs any requests from a federal or immigration agent to interview students, gather information or access a school site be forwarded to a superintendent and school board for further guidance.

A major issue that district officials are navigating is how to get their students and faculty into and out of school buildings in a way that shields them from ICE as much as possible.

In Minnesota, Fridley Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Lewis said at a recent press conference that she has received a “dramatic increase” in families requesting door to door transportation.

“We are now transporting both students and staff in ways we never have before,” Lewis said. “I am personally patrolling with our security team every morning and every afternoon, during arrival and dismissal, we are checking neighborhoods, bus stops and school grounds for the safety of our students and their families.”

Districts have also promoted online learning programs that have previously enrolled small student populations to help them keep up with lessons. The participation rate rose from a handful of students to 20 percent in Columbia Heights’ program since the start of January, Stenvik said.

Her, of the Fresno Unified School District, said schools are still recovering from pandemic-driven attendance levels only to see new absences related to immigration.

“This wave comes, and it's almost kind of another gut punch,” she said of the immigration crackdowns.

Since last May, Los Angeles has had ICE and Customs and Border Protection presence in the city conducting hundreds of raids and arrests. For the current school year, more than 13,000 students withdrew from Los Angeles Unified School District. The district offers individualized transportation and busing options for students who need extra support, a district spokesperson said in a statement.

But communicating these efforts to students and their families is another challenge. Beaverton, Durham and Fresno Unified districts have avoided publicizing meetings on available resources to avoid families being tracked.

“The Latino network is very much word of mouth and underground, and making sure that we provide the right information to the right people,” Balderas said.

School officials have turned to local lawmakers for help navigating these issues. Some states are trying to mitigate the risk of ICE encroaching on school property by law, while others are going the opposite route by trying to force schools to cooperate with immigration agents.

In Maine, Washington state, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan and Virginia, lawmakers are rushing to pen legislation that would limit the access immigration officers have at schools. But Tennessee is also on the list of states, alongside Texas and Indiana where lawmakers want districts to comply further with immigration crackdowns.

States have passed laws to counter immigration enforcement but have run into roadblocks. In California, a ban on federal immigration officers wearing masks has been blocked in court.

“When we think about just what more lawmakers can do, is really understand, while you may have a goal to remove undocumented criminals out of the United States, … also think about the unintended consequences of the operations that you are supporting,” said Lewis of Durham Public Schools.