Retired educator Jan Resseger contemplates what Donald Trump’s massive deportation plan would mean for students caught in the mess. Reposted with permission.
Last week the NY Times’ Miriam Jordan summarized President-elect Donald Trump’s declared position on immigration enforcement: “Donald J. Trump has vowed to slash immigration—both legal and illegal—and ramp up deportations on Day 1… Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and last week said that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to accomplish his goal. His top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has said that ‘vast holding facilities’ would serve as ‘staging centers’ for the operation… (N)ot since the 1950s has the United States sought to deport people en masse, and it has not previously created a vast detention apparatus to facilitate expulsions… In addition to Mr. Miller, the president-elect has tapped other immigration hawks for key roles, including Thomas Homan, a veteran of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be ‘border czar.’ Mr. Homan has said that the administration will prioritize the removal of criminals and people with outstanding deportation orders. But he has also said that workplace raids and other tools will be deployed to round up undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the country for decades.”
While Jordan describes guidance being provided by the University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University for their foreign students who may be leaving the country for the winter holiday—recommending that they be back in the U.S. by January 19 or risk being shut out, she does not cover what may also be enormous problems in K-12 public school districts serving immigrant children and adolescents.
However, Chalkbeat‘s Kalyn Belsha explores some recent history to remind readers about what happens when massive raids disrupt public schools and terrify children and adolescents: “When immigration agents raided chicken processing plants in central Mississippi in 2019, they arrested nearly 700 undocumented workers—many of them parents of children enrolled in local schools. Teens got frantic texts to leave class and find their younger siblings. Unfamiliar faces whose names weren’t on the pick-up list showed up to take children home. School staff scrambled to make sure no child went home to an empty house, while the owner of a local gym threw together a temporary shelter for kids with nowhere else to go. In the Scott County School District, a quarter of the district’s Latino students, around 150 children, were absent from school the next day. When dozens of kids continued to miss school, staff packed onto school buses and went door to door with food, trying to reassure families that it was safe for their children to return. Academics were on hold for weeks, said Tony McGee, the district’s superintendent at the time. “We went into kind of a Mom and Dad mode and just cared for kids,” McGee said. While some children bounced back quickly, others were shaken for months. “You could tell there was still some worry on kids’ hearts.”
Schooling was utterly disrupted across the district, but in a profile of one middle school student, Belsha also explores the sometimes extended trauma for the children whose well-being the public schools are expected to protect: “Kheri Martinez was just 13 when her mother was swept up in the 2019 Mississippi raids. She was one of around 1,000 children whose parents were arrested that day. A family friend picked Martinez up early from school, and she later learned from her dad—who was working out of state on a construction job—that her mother had been detained. The seventh grader bottled up her own fears and told her two little sisters, who were a toddler and early elementary schooler at the time, that their mom was working overtime. For dinner, they ate pizza dropped off by worried family friends… Her mom came home crying at 4 in the morning—immigration officials had released some parents of small children on humanitarian grounds while their cases proceeded—and Martinez finally felt like she could breathe… What Martinez experienced is not uncommon among children whose parents have been caught up in immigration raids. Multiple studies have documented the sweeping psychological, emotional, and financial toll that such operations have on children and their families… For Martinez, it took a year for school to feel normal again. She often felt like she was on edge, “on the lookout” for another raid.”
Belsha quotes Superintendent McGee’s advice to the school leaders today looking at President-elect Trump’s threatened deportations: “When families are separated, and you’re responsible for how do these kids get home and who takes care of them, it helps to have a little insight that: Hey, you need to be prepared.” Belsha adds: School staff who’ve experienced raids in their communities say it’s especially important to develop an emergency protocol for how children should be signed out at school if their approved caretaker is not available to pick them up. Identifying a potential temporary shelter for students—whether at a school, a local church, or a community center—is also helpful.”
Some School Districts Today Have Begun Preparing for Trump’s Threatened Raids
School board members and school superintendents in many districts where they have watched students face immigration raids in the past are responding to Trump’s threats proactively. CNN reported in mid-November that, “The Los Angeles Unified school board… unanimously approved a motion to reaffirm its sanctuary policy, which bars school personnel from voluntarily cooperating with immigration enforcement or sharing information about the immigration status of students and families with immigration agencies.” EdSource adds that the school board’s action requires, “Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to present a plan to the board within 60 days, in time for implementation by Jan. 20, when Trump returns to the White House. The resolution says Carvalho’s plan should involve training LAUSD educators, administrators and staff on responding to federal agencies and anybody else who seeks information or attempts to enter a campus. Meanwhile, the resolution insists that LAUSD will ‘aggressively oppose’ any laws forcing school districts to work with federal agencies and personnel involved with immigration enforcement.”
Writing for the Associated Press, Bianca Vazquez Toness quotes Gustavo Balderas, school superintendent in Beaverton, Oregon and president of the American School Superintendents’ Association, urging school superintendents and school boards to prepare in advance. He watched the fear and panic among families during an immigration raid several years ago when he served in another Oregon school district: “All bets are off with Trump… If something happens, I feel like it will happen a lot quicker than last time.” Vazquez Toness reports, however, that politics is complicating preparations in many school districts. “Speaking up on behalf of immigrant families also can put superintendents at odds with school board members… More than two dozen superintendents and district communications representatives contacted by The Associated Press either ignored or declined requests for comments.”
Vazquez Toness adds, however, that when school districts do pass policies to protect students during immigration raids, “these policies reaffirm their students’ constitutional right to a free, public education, regardless of immigration status.” In Plyler v. Doe, decided in 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court protected the right to free public education for all students including undocumented immigrants.
