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For three decades, federal policy has limited immigration arrests at or near schools, treating the places where children learn as “sensitive” or “protected” areas.
But President-elect Donald Trump likely will rescind that policy soon after his return to the White House, according to recent reporting from NBC News.
That could open the door for immigration agents to more frequently stop parents as they drop their kids off at school, or for interactions with school police to lead to students and their parents being detained.
Educators and advocates for immigrant children worry that would create an environment of fear that could deter families from bringing their children to school or participating in school events. That could, in turn, interrupt kids’ learning and make it harder for educators to build trusting relationships with immigrant families.
“The implications would be enormous,” said Patricia Gándara, an education professor at UCLA who’s researched how immigration enforcement affects children and schools. When families know that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has “the authority to move in on the school, it starts rumors. And you don’t even have to have this happen for it to spread throughout the community that the ICE are around the school, don’t take your kid to school.”
An estimated 4.4 million U.S.-born children have at least one undocumented parent, and an estimated 733,000 school aged-kids are undocumented themselves. Other students may have authorization to live in the United States but hold temporary immigration statuses that Trump has threatened to revoke. Researchers estimate that half a million school-age children have arrived in the U.S. just in the last two years.
Federal law generally overrides state and local statutes, and immigration agents have broad authority to detain people they suspect of being in the country illegally. Nonetheless, several large school districts already have reupped or expanded policies they crafted during the first Trump administration to reassure students and parents. And lawmakers in California — where 1 in 5 children are part of a family with at least one undocumented member — have put forward bills that seek to protect immigrant students.
Viridiana Carrizales, the CEO of ImmSchools, a nonprofit that’s training school leaders and educators on how they can support immigrant students as Trump takes office, said she’s been advising school districts that even if the sensitive locations policy ends, students still have certain rights.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to have an immigration official come, and if they ask for a student’s record, that doesn’t mean that the school has to comply,” Carrizales said. “I want to make sure our families don’t feel like they can’t even go out of their homes. Because that’s not a way to live.”
But those efforts aren’t the same as guarantees of safety at or near schools.
In 2020, immigration agents arrested Verónica del Carmen Lara Márquez shortly after she dropped off her 4-year-old daughter at a Philadelphia elementary school. The arrest stemmed from a court order for failing to appear at immigration hearings out of state. She was detained at a bus stop but released shortly after on humanitarian grounds — Lara Márquez was three months pregnant at the time.
Advocates: Schools need clear policies, training on immigration
Federal officials have limited arrests and investigations on school grounds since at least the early 1990s. Under President Barack Obama the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a memo in 2011 that limited immigration enforcement at or near “sensitive locations,” which included schools, daycares, colleges, school events, and bus stops with children waiting at them.
The policy was expanded to additional “protected areas” under President Joe Biden in 2021. That included any places where children gather, such as playgrounds, recreation centers, and after-school programs.
Even so, agents can and have conducted enforcement near schools. Generally, immigration officials need to get permission from a supervisor before making an arrest or conducting an interview near a school, though there are exceptions for matters of national security or threats to public safety.
Trump left the sensitive locations policy intact during his first term, but won re-election with a series of hardline immigration proposals, including a plan for mass deportations. Project 2025, a policy playbook drafted by several former and incoming Trump White House officials, called for rescinding any memos that identify “sensitive zones” where immigration enforcement should be limited.
The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
With that likely change on the horizon, Carrizales said now is a good time for schools to make sure they have clear policies outlining how school staff and school police interact, or don’t, with federal immigration officials. School staff should know, for example, if they’re supposed to ask for a warrant or judicial order, or if they should immediately direct any inquiries to the district’s superintendent and legal counsel.
All school staff — from the front office clerks to school principals — should be trained on the policy. It also should be translated and shared with families.
Schools can also check to see if commonly used forms, such as applications for free or reduced-price school meals, ask for information that conveys immigration status, like a Social Security Number. (Schools generally aren’t supposed to ask families about their immigration status because it can scare undocumented families and violate their children’s right to a public education, as laid out in Plyler v Doe, a landmark Supreme Court ruling.)
Families are likely to be on high alert. Carrizales said she’s even heard from families worried about their child being enrolled in a dual language program, because they fear that information could signal they’re from an immigrant family.
Schools may consider changing their forms, or making it clear to families that immigration information isn’t required, Carrizales said.
Some states and school districts are trying to add additional layers of protection.
California’s schools superintendent, Tony Thurmond, for example, is backing two pieces of legislation that would limit immigration enforcement near schools in that state.
The first would prohibit immigration officers from entering school buildings without a valid ID, a court order, a statement of purpose, and approval from the school district’s superintendent. Even if they met those requirements, agents couldn’t enter while kids were present. The second bill, introduced earlier this week, would prohibit local police from cooperating with immigration officials within one mile of a school, in an attempt to make families feel safe dropping off and picking up their children.
Chicago’s school board passed a resolution last month doubling down on a commitment to protect immigrant students, including blocking immigration officials from entering schools or interacting with school staff without a criminal warrant. The Los Angeles school board passed a similar resolution about training district staff on how they’d respond if a federal official tried to enter a school campus.
New York City, meanwhile, reissued its longstanding policy that prevents non-city law enforcement from going into school buildings except in specific cases, and is training principals and school safety agents about the protocols.
Still, it’s likely the Trump administration or others will try to challenge so-called “sanctuary” policies like these. Already, advisers to the incoming president are looking to withhold federal funds and other resources from Democrat-led cities if they refuse to participate in deporting undocumented immigrants, the Washington Post reported last month. Where exactly a school district’s power starts and a federal immigration official’s authority ends is unclear.
“There is wide and longstanding latitude for states to shape educational policy, and that includes things like what it takes to create a safe and welcoming school environment,” said Nicholas Espíritu, a deputy director at the National Immigration Law Center. “There are at times a gray zone about when that federal power can supersede or preempt the state power, but states do, in fact, have wide latitude to establish policies about school safety.”
Case in point: A Nebraska school superintendent who weathered an immigration raid in his community in 2006 recently said his biggest regret was telling families that immigration officials wouldn’t be allowed on school property.
He later got a call from an immigration official telling him: “I want you to know you’re wrong, we have jurisdiction. If we want to go into your schools we can.”
Minor offenses can prompt immigration arrests
Even with a sensitive locations policy in place, there were high-profile cases of parents who were stopped on their way to or from their child’s school during the first Trump administration.
In 2017, for example, immigration agents arrested Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez a few minutes after he dropped off his 12-year-old daughter at a Los Angeles middle school. His other daughter, then 13, recorded a video of the encounter while sobbing. Two misdemeanor convictions prompted the stop: a decade-old DUI and another for receiving a stolen vehicle registration sticker.
The father was released after six months in detention, but the arrest spread fear throughout his community.
Living under the threat of deportation has had ripple effects. During Trump’s first term, some immigrant parents in Florida’s Broward County started walking their kids to school instead of driving, in order to avoid committing traffic infractions leading to interactions with police. Others sent their kids to school with immigration paperwork tucked in their backpacks.
In New York City, schools that serve new immigrant students had to coax in parents who were afraid to attend parent-teacher conferences and open-school nights.
To quell those fears, schools can work with community-based organizations or local immigrant rights groups to host know-your-rights workshops so parents know what to do if they’re stopped on their way to or from their child’s school.
“We’re reminding our families that: Yes, they may be limited, but we still have rights, and it’s important for us to know what those rights are,” said Carrizales, who used to be undocumented herself. “One of the biggest things is if anybody comes and asks you what your immigration status is, for our families not to respond and not to sign anything.”
There’s also concerns that routine interactions with police could lead immigrant students and families to get caught up in deportation proceedings.
In 2007, a ninth grader in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District was deported with his family after school officials found a small amount of marijuana in his backpack. The school called local police, who notified the Border Patrol of the family’s immigration status. Immigration agents showed up at the boy’s high school and took him and his family into custody.
School officials later said police should have waited to call immigration agents until the family was off campus because their arrival sparked rumors of an immigration raid at the school.
Andrew Hairston, who directs the education justice project at the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, worries cases like this could become more common if Trump rescinds the sensitive locations policy. In Texas, for example, public schools are required to have an armed officer on campus during school hours.
“My great fear is that with this police state that exists on school campuses, young people are often deprived of their inherent dignity just to go to school and do their best to learn,” Hairston said. “Then when you add this rhetoric on, that ICE might come in and enforce immigration laws, then you really just have this environment of trepidation.”
Carrizales, of ImmSchools, says school districts that have their own police departments should have clear protocols for how school police would interact with an immigration agent and communicate those with families.
If the sensitive places policy goes away, that doesn’t mean “district police get to become immigration agents or get to operate with immigration officials,” she said. “It’s really important for districts to make that very clear for families.”
Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.
