With approximately five million children in the U.S. living in homes with at least one undocumented parent, a new report details principals’ perspectives on how immigration enforcement has affected students and their families.
An online survey conducted between June and August 2025 asked 606 U.S. public high school principals about the impacts of immigration enforcement in the latter half of the 2024-2025 school year.
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“Our analysis aims to illuminate the profound challenges of advancing the goals of U.S. public schooling—supporting learning and democratic education for all—in a moment of intensive immigration enforcement,” the researchers wrote.
According to the report, 70% of principals said students from immigrant families have expressed concerns about their well-being or the well-being of their families “due to policies or political rhetoric related to immigrants.” One principal from Tennessee said some immigrant parents have sheltered in their homes to avoid encountering ICE officers. She noted some students “weren’t eating properly” because fear kept their parents from going to the grocery store.
School Attendance, Bullying and Immigration
A strong majority of principals also reported declines in attendance and learning of students from immigrant families. Nearly 58% said some immigrant parents and guardians left the community during the school year. In some instances, students moved with them, leaving them unable to finish the school year.
“We had a couple of students that I’m sorry to say that just stopped coming, and we didn’t know what happened to them,” said a Michigan principal. “There were rumors that they had left the country and/or gone to a different area of the country where they felt safer.”
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Furthermore, nearly 64% of principals reported that students from immigrant families missed school. One principal from Washington, D.C., said the daily attendance rate of immigrant students fell by 10% compared to the previous year. Several principals said some student absences occurred “because teenagers had to take on new responsibilities in light of caregivers being detained or sheltering at home.”
More than a third (35.6%) of principals also said students from immigrant families have reported that they have been bullied or harassed at school.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) also reported in July that current U.S. immigration policies have been linked to “profound emotional harm” among children. The anxiety resulting from ICE raids and potential family separations has been linked to increases in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic anxiety in children and adolescents.
Most Schools Have Plans for ICE Encounters
In Jan. 2025, President Trump revoked a directive implemented in 2011 barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol officers from making arrests in “sensitive” areas, including schools. Many school and state leaders quickly issued guidance on how schools should react if approached by ICE agents. The new survey found that nearly 78% of principals have since “created a school plan to respond to visits from federal agents.”
Another 47% reported that they have “created a school plan to address student needs if parents or guardians experienced deportation.”
“We trained staff and worked with some of our families to sort of have a ‘Plan B’—Student goes home after school, or after an extracurricular activity, and their parents aren’t there, and they find out later that they’ve been picked up by ICE. Like, what’s the plan?” said a Texas principal. “We did work with families to sort of just set up contingency plans so that hopefully that never happens, but if it did, the student doesn’t have to figure out in that moment ‘Who am I calling? Who am I staying with? Who’s helping me get dinner? Like, what do I do with school?’”
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Additional findings include:
- Almost half (45%) of principals reported they have “created professional development for staff on how to support students from immigrant families.”
- 57% reported their school partnered with “community-based organizations who support students.”
- 33% reported they have “connected students with legal services.”
