First Day of School: Empty Chairs, Distracted Children, and Panicked Parents

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“We’re afraid to go out.” That’s how Blanca López sums up what she feels as she takes her two children to the start of school at 24th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. She knows it will be a difficult school year, amid the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies, from which schools are not exempt. “It doesn’t matter if they’re undocumented or not, just because they look Latino or are of another ethnicity.”

Trump’s return to the White House and his tougher measures against immigrants have put children, adolescents, and entire educational communities in a vulnerable situation due to fears of deportation. Recent reports and testimonies collected by CNN highlight the impact of its immigration policy on some schools, particularly in California’s Central Valley and Los Angeles, but also in other US states.

Local immigration raids expanded “drastically” in the United States during the first two months of 2025 and coincide with an increase in school absenteeism, according to a report by Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University, who, in collaboration with data collected by the university, evaluated the context in five school districts in the region over the past three years.

“The results indicate that recent raids coincided with a 22% increase in daily school absenteeism, with particularly pronounced increases among younger students,” says the analysis, which also highlights the impact of these measures on child stress and development, as well as learning opportunities.

Currently in Los Angeles, “a significant number of community members and students did not attend their scheduled summer classes” for fear of raids, María Miranda, vice president of elementary education for the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union, told CNN. She says they have been seeing the “negative social and emotional impact” of immigration enforcement operations in schools and the community for months.

The Trump administration decided last January that federal immigration authorities could arrest people and conduct raids in and near places like churches and schools, rescinding a 2011 directive that prevented law enforcement in so-called sensitive areas.