Opinion: Children and Schools Should Be Off Limits to Immigration Enforcement

Our country has long been committed to maintaining schools as safe spaces for children to learn. Until now. Decades of presidential administrations representing both parties have stood behind policies that kept immigration enforcement out of schools, except in extreme and unusual circumstances. The rules were designed so immigration officers could do their jobs without putting students and teachers at risk. This was even the case with the first Trump administration. That is no longer true as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers haunt schoolyards and school bus stops. As education advocates on the ground in two cities where ICE’s chilling effect on school attendance has been the most intense, we urge Congress to use ongoing negotiations over the Department of Homeland Security budget to help keep students in our classrooms. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Congress has the authority and responsibility to ensure schools are designated as sensitive locations, free of immigration enforcement, and able to serve as safe and welcoming places of learning for all. The evidence is clear across every dimension on why children should be in school every day: better life outcomes, overall societal economic value, reduced crime, better health and more. This is so obvious that in 1982, during the Reagan administration, the Supreme Court ruled that all students enjoy a Constitutional right to attend America’s public schools, for free, regardless of immigration status. Aggressive immigration actions have driven record lows in student attendance — the number one prerequisite for a student’s ability to learn. In Minneapolis, attendance dropped below 50% at some schools during Operation MetroSurge. In Chicago, as many as 3,000 additional students who would have been in attendance are missing school every week as a result of immigration actions. Approximately 14,000 students stayed home on September 29, 2025, alone due to ICE actions. Whole classrooms go empty and thousands of educational hours are lost as terrified children, many of them U.S. citizens, remain absent following heavy immigration activity near schools. We recognize the value of immigration enforcement when it is focused on those who pose a safety risk to our communities, but schools should not be the place where this enforcement occurs. Armed immigration officers patrolling school bus stops and outside school buildings are causing significant instability and impacting learning. During Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, schools quickly restructured bus routes because it was no longer safe for students to wait at bus stops, and staff and parents drove neighborhood children to school. In both Chicago and Minneapolis, parents formed human shields around schools to allow students to safely enter and exit the building. Teachers switched from hanging student work on the wall to using craft paper to block out the windows of first-floor classrooms. But the impact of recent immigration enforcement tactics goes beyond forcing communities to devise strategies to get kids safely to their schoolrooms. As required by law, school administrators are implementing lockdowns similar to those used in mass shooter situations when armed agents are near schools. Students stop coming to school after seeing their teachers, classmates and other parents detained at drop-off or pick-up. As a result, schools scramble to provide virtual learning options for kids who often lack reliable internet access or sufficient devices. Children, including citizens in or near schools where indiscriminate immigration actions have bled into their safe spaces, have racked up learning loss similar to what was experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. ICE enforcement near schools is effectively manufacturing the same devastating effects on children as the pandemic. For thousands of families and children in Minnesota, Chicago, and across the U.S., faith in our education system is in peril. Back in 1982, the Supreme Court acknowledged how sacred it was to protect schools and children’s learning. Congress must harken back to those sentiments and ensure children today are equally protected. There are different views on the issues that Democrats and Republicans are currently debating that are holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security. However, one of those demands should be easy to agree upon: protecting sensitive areas, especially schools, school bus stops and other places where children congregate. We are asking our better angels to intervene and ensure that the final DHS funding agreement includes clear, enforceable protections for sensitive locations that keep immigration enforcement away from schools so that every child can attend school safely and regularly.