Trump’s immigration policy is already terrifying America’s kids

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Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election last November, kids around the country have been scared about what his promise of mass deportations might mean for them and their classmates.

“They come up and say, ‘What’s going to happen, teacher?’” Elma Alvarez, an instructional specialist at an elementary school in Tucson, Arizona, told me.

Now the fear in classrooms has ratcheted up to a new level, thanks to a directive issued last week allowing immigration agents to arrest people at schools and other “sensitive areas” that they’ve avoided in the past. Anxiety ramped up even further last Friday after federal agents who showed up at a Chicago elementary school were initially mistaken for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

They were actually Secret Service agents, but the episode has parents in the city feeling frightened, with one mom, who has legal status but whose children do not, telling the Washington Post over the weekend that she didn’t want her son going back to school until things had calmed down.

The incident “reflects the fear and anxiety that is present in our city right now,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said in a letter to parents.

That fear and anxiety have been echoed around the country, with parents and students afraid to leave their homes, and educators worried about how the threat of ICE raids could affect a generation of kids already reeling from school shootings, the Covid-19 pandemic, wildfires, and other disasters.

“They’ve already been through so much,” Alvarez said. “School is a place where everybody, every single person that steps on campus, should feel safe.”

The fear of ICE in classrooms

Since at least 2011 — including during the first Trump administration — ICE policy has been to avoid making immigration arrests in or around schools, churches, hospitals, and other locations deemed “sensitive,” in order to avoid scaring people away from basic services. But last Tuesday, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security reversed that policy, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that “this action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murders and rapists — who have illegally come into our country.”

The Trump administration has said it will target violent criminals in its immigration enforcement actions — and not, presumably, schoolchildren. Moreover, all children in the US have a legal right to a public education regardless of immigration status, as Axios notes, and schools generally do not keep track of whether students are in the country legally. Some school districts, such as Chicago and New York, have said they will not allow ICE agents into schools without a warrant signed by a judge. Getting such a warrant can be an “involved process” and “we did not see a lot of that in the first Trump term,” said Julie Sugarman, associate director for K–12 education research at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

Even if ICE agents do enter a school, there is a legal argument that arresting children there violates their right to an education, some experts say. However, the Trump administration has already taken actions many believe to be unconstitutional, such as attempting to end birthright citizenship, and the sense that the country is entering uncharted territory is fueling panic in many immigrant communities.

“There’s just a generalized sense of fear and confusion” about the new administration’s policies, said Abigail L’Esperance, co-director of the immigration program at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, California. “It’s a lot of wait and see, but with an undercurrent of terror.”

The fear is the most acute among families in which one or more members are undocumented — 6.3 million households, according to the Pew Research Center. Nearly 70 percent of those families are “mixed status,” meaning at least one member is a US citizen or legal resident.

But the prospect of federal agents entering a classroom and taking students can be terrifying for any child, regardless of immigration status. Decades ago, border patrol agents came to Alvarez’s sister’s classroom and took two of her classmates away, Alvarez told me.

“My sister was in first grade. She’s almost 50 now, and she remembers that day so clearly,” Alvarez said. “She still remembers her whole class just breaking out in tears.”

“That’s what’s going to happen to our children, our students,” if ICE does enter classrooms, Alvarez said.

Kids are scared of losing their parents

Beyond fear of ICE raids at school, kids are facing another worry too: that when they get home at the end of the day, their parents won’t be there anymore. “The children are saying to their mothers, ‘I don’t want you to be deported, I don’t want to be separated from you,’” said Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice: Communities for Quality Education, a nonprofit that serves primarily Latino and Indigenous parents in Los Angeles.

Aleman herself was deported in 1970 along with her mother, while her father stayed behind in the US, she told me. “Here we are, 55 years later, still dealing with family separation,” she said. “The trauma is real and it never goes away.”

Research has found that children separated from families under the first Trump administration experienced profound harms, including PTSD; in 2021, a group of pediatricians wrote that family separation “constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment that rises to the level of torture.”

The anxiety that someone in their family could be deported is already affecting children at school. It’s hard for them to focus on subjects like math and reading “when all they’re thinking about is what is happening to Mom and Dad,” Alvarez said. “They’re just on survival mode right now.”

Other kids are scared to even leave the house. Carolina Avila, a social worker for the East Bay Community Law Center who works with students who came to the US as unaccompanied minors, says many of her clients “have expressed an intense fear of really going anywhere, not just school.”

Some parents, too, “don’t feel safe congregating, they don’t feel safe leaving their home,” Aleman said. Some are afraid to drive or walk their kids to school.

That fear comes at a time when school districts are trying to battle chronic absenteeism and get kids back in school after the disruption of the pandemic. It’s also a time when kids around the country have to endure active shooter drills and hear about children their age losing their lives to gun violence. “Our kids are already traumatized thinking some crazy person is going to come in and shoot them,” Alvarez said.

For the kids in Aleman’s community in Los Angeles, fear of ICE arrives on the heels of devastating wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes and at least eight schools. While the fires are a natural disaster, ICE raids are “a disaster of human proportions,” Aleman said. “It’s being caused on a human being by another human being.”

How schools are supporting kids

As the next weeks and months unfold, schools and districts can help kids by publicly affirming their right to an education and setting clear policies around when and how ICE agents can enter schools, experts say. Families may also need help creating alternate care plans in case a child’s parents are detained, said Avila, the social worker, who works with the Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project, a program serving unaccompanied minors in California.

Outside of schools, ordinary people can also support students and families who are feeling fear right now, Alvarez said: “Call your local legislative representative, let them know that you don’t think this is right.”

“These kids are loving kids,” she said. “They’re intelligent. They care about their community. They love their families. They’re not here to hurt anyone. They’re here to be a child.”

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To share your thoughts, recommendations, or ideas for stories I should cover, get in touch with me at anna.north@vox.com.

Update, January 31, 4:15 pm ET: This piece was originally published on January 30 and was updated to include Carolina Avila’s affiliation with the East Bay Community Law Center.