In January, the Trump administration rolled back a decades-old Department of Homeland Security memo that protected sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, courthouses, and places of worship from immigration enforcement. These protections once ensured that students — especially those from mixed-status or undocumented families — could attend school without fear of deportation. Now, with those safeguards rolled back, schools nationwide are bracing for potential raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), fueling widespread anxiety.
For many students, particularly those from immigrant families, this anxiety is manifesting in their everyday lives. Rebecca, a high school teacher in El Paso who has been teaching for eight years and asked to withhold her last name to avoid professional retaliation, sees it as “a real slap in the face and an assault on everything that I know a school should be, which is a safe place for students to learn.” “You can’t learn if you are in an unsafe situation,” she added.
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Betty, a teacher at a Chicago public high school, who also asked to withhold her last name, works in the same district where US Secret Service agents were mistaken for ICE agents outside a Chicago elementary school last week, inciting panic. She also spoke to increased anxiety in the community.
“I have students who are born here, but their parents are undocumented, so they’re very concerned about their parents,” she told Teen Vogue. “Their parents are asking, ‘What are you going to do if we come home from school and we’re gone, we’re deported?’ These kids are worried every day about their parents being taken away. It’s heartbreaking to hear these conversations, but it’s real for them.”
Rebecca added, “We know that parents that come from or students that come from mixed-status families are going [to be] impacted in their decisions on whether to keep attending school, how they get to school.”
Rebecca and Betty aren’t alone. Educators nationwide report rising absenteeism as parents keep children home out of fear.
Gabriel is a Venezuelan immigrant who attended high school in Miami during the first Trump administration and only received Temporary Protected Status (TPS) during his senior year. He, too, asked to withhold his last name to protect his anonymity. Gabriel explained that the presence of ICE in schools would have fundamentally altered his ability to access education and feel safe. “When I first arrived…I learned that schools were a protective place, and that truly allowed me to grow… I think it’s really unfortunate that students could have this opportunity stolen because I know a lot of families are going to be distrustful.”
He explained that, for his parents, who are still waiting to hear back on their asylum case, the rollback of school protections would have made it impossible for them to feel safe taking him to and from school. The fear of enforcement, he said, would have forced them to make impossible choices — between his education and their family’s safety.
