School Attendance Drops Sharply As Trump Admin No Longer Considers It a 'Sensitive Location' For ICE

Hours upon returning to office, President Donald Trump declared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be allowed to detain migrants in "sensitive" locations such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. Months later, a rising number of students are avoiding going to school to not get deported.

That conclusion came from a recent study by Stanford University, which pointed out that immigration raids over the last few months contributed to lower school attendance. More specifically, parents deliberately left their kids out of school following the news of raids earlier this year, particularly in California's Central Valley.

The recently-published paper, conducted by Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education, looked at attendance data from five school districts in the southern part of the Central Valley, serving a total of over 100,000 children. Public schools do not track immigration status. However, a majority of students in the region come from families with unclear legal status.

Dee's study found that daily absences jumped 22% around the time the raids in Central Valley occurred. The spike in absences is equivalent to the average student missing about 15 days of school each year, up from 12 days.

Immigrant parents say their kids were absent from school because they feared being arrested while their children got an education, and being deported without them. Hence, rather than risk separation, some parents opted to keep their children at home, The New York Times reports.

Further, while migrants in the Central Valley are said that fears of deportation have always been present and in the back of their minds, those worries have skyrocketed during the Trump administration. They credit their anxiety to Trump's aggressive agenda and rhetoric, as well as stories of family separation and children placed in foster care, often shared via social media.

The findings of the study are significant, particularly for their potential impact on immigrant children. They suggest that raids can harm student achievement and disrupt how schools function, even when they do not occur on or near school grounds.

At the same time, funding for these schools may also be at risk, since schools in California are paid according to student attendance, The New York Times suggests.

As a result, teachers may have to adjust the curriculum to meet the needs of students who have fallen behind after missing class. School counselors and social workers are already devoting more of their hours to tracking down missing children and to treating their anxiety about deportation, according to educators in the region.

Mere hours after President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, his administration rescinded policies that restricted immigration enforcement actions in or near schools, along with other previously protected locations like churches and hospitals. A DHS spokesperson said at the time of the announcement that the new policy empowered ICE and CBP actions "to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens— including murderers and rapists— who have illegally come into our country."

Now, as the new study suggests the policy has led to decreased school attendance, the White House continues to stand by their decision. In a written statement responding to the recent research findings, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, "illegal immigration is incredibly disruptive to all Americans, including families, students and teachers. The Trump administration won't apologize for enforcing the law and restoring order to American communities."