By Laura Meckler, Kim Bellware, Hannah Natanson · The Washington Post (c) 2025
School leaders across the country are working to reassure immigrant families that it is safe to send their children to school amid growing fears that the Trump administration will target undocumented immigrants on school grounds.
Anxiety in many cities was already thick over President Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally. Then this week, the Trump administration reversed more than a decade of policy,saying it will no longer direct immigration agents to avoid “sensitive locations,” including schools, hospitals and churches.
Fearful thatsome parents will keep their children at home, many districts are pushing out information about local rules that aimto counter or at least mitigate federal policies. Some are stressing, for instance, that their district will insist that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show a judicial warrant before being given access to school property or information. ICE routinely obtains judicial warrants when it is also investigating a crime, experts say, but agents are unlikely to have them during routine immigration enforcement operations.
Immigration enforcement at schools has been rare, experts and school officials say. Nonetheless, the swirl of news that has accompanied Trump’s first week in office has some parents worried that a routine visit to their children’s school could end in deportation.
“I am scared I will go to pick up my children, and they will be there taking parents from the schools,” an undocumented Guatemalan mother of two who lives in Los Angeles said in an interview.
The mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family, said she is asking family members if they can take charge of her children, should she be deported. And she said she will keep her family at home the moment she hears that immigration enforcement agents have been sighted anywhere near the schools or churches in her community.
School leaders say they worry that this sort of thinking could lead to days or weeks of missed school, which would be damaging for children, both socially and academically.
There’s “a whole bunch of kids where their only chance in life is to get a great education,” former education secretary Arne Duncan, a Democrat, said at an event this week hosted by the Brookings Institution. If “because of the fear and the hatred their parents decide to keep them safe and not send them to school – devastating consequences.”
The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, estimates there are 733,000 school-aged undocumented children living in the United States, and many more who were born here but whose parents are unauthorized. Children in the United States have been legally entitled to a free education regardless of their immigration status since the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe.
School leaders said this week that they are trying to reassure their communities and educate their staff about school policies, including directing them to alert the central office if an immigration officer shows up.
“I’m trying to make sure parents know that the safest place for their children is our schools,” said Pedro Martinez, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. In the days before the inauguration, there were news reports that the Trump administration planned to immediately launch immigration enforcement raids in Chicago, which heightened fears even more, though such raids have not yet occurred.
Martinez said that his district began sending information to families in eight different languages ahead of the inauguration and has been partnering with advocacy groups to make sure that parents know their rights if they encounter an immigration agent. Groups are also helping parents make plans for their children if they are deported. “It’s easy to be afraid. They are going to be more afraid if they don’t have information,” he said.
The influential Chicago Teachers Union also has held a series of “Sanctuary Schools” staff trainings on how to respond if immigration agents show up at school. Some 250 staffers have participated, including counselors, clerks and teachers who are crafting safety plans and checklists should ICE agents come to a school, said Linda Perales, a former bilingual special education teacher with the union who is now an organizer leading the trainings.
“The sense I’ve gotten from members is: ‘I can’t believe we’re here again’ – and at the same time – ‘I can believe it,’” Perales said. “Teachers are tired, but also very ready to organize and protect students.”
In Los Angeles, the school board approved a resolution soon after the presidential election promising to do everything in its power to “protect and defend students, families and staff” from harm that may be caused by the new administration.
A spokesperson said this week that the district has had a policy since 2017 of not voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and the district had begun mandatory training for staff in how to respond if federal immigration officers appear. It also has published detailed instructions to help staff in such situations, including a directive to not cooperate absent exigent circumstances such as imminent risk of death or violence and fresh pursuit of a dangerous felon. It also has produced “know your rights” cards to distribute to students with instructions about how to respond if they are approached by an agent and published resource guides for families online.
And on Wednesday, an advisory and oversight panel for New York City schools unanimously approved a resolution denying ICE access to school facilities, students and student records, absent exigent circumstances or a judicial warrant. The district, it said, “will continue to welcome all students, staff, and their families regardless of immigration status.”
AASA, the national group for school superintendents, gives its members similar advice. Tara Thomas, government affairs manager for the group, said it advises schools to allow ICE agents access if they have a judicial warrant but not if they have the more common administrative warrants.
Since 2011, ICE has adhered to a “sensitive locations” policy, which, with some exceptions, has required agents to obtain special approval for enforcement actions in certain places. Initially that list included schools from preschool through college; hospitals; churches and other places of worship; sites of funerals, weddings and other religious ceremonies, and public demonstrations such as marches, rallies and parades. In 2021, that list was expanded to include other health-care facilities, playgrounds, social service facilities and emergency response sites.
On Monday, Trump’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the policy effective immediately. “Going forward, law enforcement officers should continue to use … discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense,” wrote Benjamine C. Huffman, acting DHS secretary. “It is not necessary, however, for the head of the agency to create bright line rules regarding where our immigration laws are permitted to be enforced.”
The new rules do not mean that ICE is going to start routinely making arrests at schools and hospitals, said Corey Price, who retired recently as head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations branch. He said he sees the change as necessary to counter a situation where, for instance, someone wanted for deportation is holed up inside a church.
Price, who worked at ICE for more than 20 years, said he cannot recall an enforcement action at a school and doubts that ICE will want to conduct them there. Agents do not like to conduct operations where there are a lot of people present because it is less safe for everyone involved, he said. Still, he said, agents might go to a school if that was the only way to locate and arrest someone targeted for deportation.
He added that ICE agents use administrative warrants – signed by someone inside ICE – not judicial warrants for routine deportations. Judicial warrants are needed, he argued, only if an arrest is part of a criminal investigation. He added that ICE officers are allowed to operate anywhere that is open to the public. School buildings, however, are not open to members of the public and ICE may not be able to insist on access, absent a judicial warrant, if school officials resist, he said.
Still, if outdoor areas or sidewalks near schools are open to the public, it would be easier for ICE to operate there without a warrant.
Others agreed that operations at schools are rare and are skeptical that will change, even with the sensitive locations guidance gone.
“They’re interested in carrying out their jobs in the most efficient ways. I’m not sure that would lead them to schools or churches,” said Julia Gelatt, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute. She said that in rare cases, though, it might make sense and that “they don’t want to be constrained.”
But beyond operations, Gelatt said, the announcement this week may have been meant to ramp up fears. “The Trump administration is trying to send a very clear message that people in the country without authorization should feel scared,” she said.
A spokesperson for DHS did not immediately respond to a question about whether the policy is meant to send this message.
There may be a few “showplace raids,” where agents swoop in to nab someone near a school, predicted Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a nonprofit that offers legal representation across the D.C. region to adult and child immigrants placed in detention.
“That’ll stoke fear in the community,” Lukens said. “This is about trying to take away some of the last places that people can feel safe.”
He also predicted lawsuits will challenge the revocation of the sensitive locations guidance, some based on the Supreme Court ruling that all children are entitled to attend public schools. Lukens said advocates can make the case that this right is endangered by the new policy.
In Chicago, some undocumented parents are creating plans for their U.S. citizen neighbors to take their children to school if immigration raids are reported, said Jazmin Cerda, who works with about 75 parent leaders across nine community schools in predominantly Latino and immigrant Chicago neighborhoods through the nonprofit Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. She said others are trying to figure out how to arrange guardianship for their minor children.
“It’s sad to say but – I don’t want to say they’re giving up – but their hope of not being detained is very minimal,” Cerda said of immigrant families.
“You give birth to your children,” she added. “You never [think] you’ll have to plan to give them away because of immigration.”