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How Trump’s Deportation Regime Is Reshaping Schools

Across the US, students are missing school, falling behind academically, and carrying the trauma of detention and family separation into school each day.

Undocumented third grader Yanela Sanchez practices math at her family’s apartment. Like many of her fellow immigrant students, Yanela stayed home from school the day before due to a nearby Border Patrol operation.

Lina noticed the changes right away when the two sisters returned to school after spending time in a family detention center in San Antonio. “They’re not the same as before they left,” said Lina, a teacher at a mostly Spanish-speaking public school near the southern border in El Paso.

According to Lina, who asked to be identified by her first name only due to privacy concerns, post-detention behavioral changes are not always dramatic. The subtle differences can appear in daily routine, in appetite, in the tempo of a child’s speech. Of the older sister, Lina remarked, “she doesn’t use color as much in her drawings.” Of the other, she observed distress when leftover snacks were thrown away: “She wanted to take extras or whatever was left and she didn’t want me to throw anything away.” Lina is aware that this might seem minor, but not when you are with children every day and know how to gauge when something is very wrong.

Her account comes as family detention has escalated nationwide. Data analyzed by The Marshall Project shows that ICE has detained more than 6,200 children since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, with the daily number in custody rising to about 10 times the level recorded at the end of the Biden administration.

For school staff, the fallout can take several forms: children returning after detention, students coping with a parent’s deportation, and school communities reshaped by the fear of who might be taken next.

There is a simmering sense of dread at schools coast to coast. Evelyn, an elementary school counselor in Don Ana County, New Mexico, said that when ICE raids intensified, she saw parents afraid to let their children attend classes and worried about what information schools might be forced to hand over to the government.

Indeed, according to a national survey from the Urban Institute, 10 percent of adults from immigrant families have stopped sending their kids to school. In California’s Central Valley, ICE sweeps have coincided with a 22 percent increase in daily student absences, with younger students pulled out at the highest rates. Meanwhile,........

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