Immigration raids add to absence crisis for schools
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The new paper 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. But a majority of students in the region are Latino, many that arechildren of farm workers with uncertain legal status. Those workers help produce about a quarter of the nation's food — fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts.
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Dee examined three years of attendance data. He found an unusual spike in absences in January and February following 'Operation Return to Sender,' a series of immigration sweeps conducted by US Customs and Border Protection.
Dozens of day laborers and field workers were arrested at a Home Depot, in parking lots, and at gas stations.
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The operation took place in the final days of President Joe Biden's term. But it was seen as a sign of the immigration enforcement agency's enthusiasm for Trump's agenda. Since then, immigration sweeps in California and across the country have been sporadic, though highly publicized.
And on Friday, immigration officials paused raids targeting farmworkers, among others, after the president acknowledged earlier in the week that the raids were hurting the agricultural industry.
In the Central Valley, immigrant parents said that after the January raids, they feared being arrested while their children were at school and being deported without them. Rather than risk separation, some parents kept children home.
The spike in absences is equivalent to the average student missing about 15 days of school each year, up from 12 days, according to Dee's paper.
He called the findings 'a canary in the coal mine' for public education. If absences continue to be elevated, they could threaten student learning and children's mental health.
Funding is also at risk, since schools in California are paid according to student attendance.
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.
The new paper echoes past research that found that under Trump, Biden, and President Barack Obama, immigration raids led to decreases in student attendance at nearby schools.
Many immigrants in the Central Valley said that while fears of deportation had always hung over them, anxiety has never been higher. It is fueled by Trump's aggressive agenda and rhetoric, and by stories of family separation and children placed in foster care, often shared via social media.
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One Mexican father of two schoolchildren in Fresno, ages 14 and 6, said that deportation alongside his wife and children would mean losing possessions, wealth, and his work as a mechanic. In California, he and his wife, a farmworker, had carefully built a life.
But while losing that life would be difficult, deportation without their children, he said, was simply unthinkable.
Like other migrant parents, the man asked to remain unnamed because of his uncertain legal status.
He has cut out many of his family's nonessential trips outside their home but has continued to send his children to school.
Many others have not.
A Fresno mother, also from Mexico, was so fearful of being deported if she left her home that she paid someone else to drive her daughter to school. She also asked that her name not be used.
She eventually resumed drop-offs, which is when she noticed a change at the school's doors. There were fewer children waiting in line to file into the building. Half a dozen families she used to see at drop-off were no longer there.
In a written statement responding to the research findings, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, 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.'
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