Many of the nation’s school districts are returning to the classroom with immigrant families fearful of the Trump administration’s targeting of undocumented migrants, according to educators, experts and parents who spoke to ABC News.
Los Angeles and Chicago’s school districts — the nation’s second- and third-largest public school systems, respectively — have returned with new guidance and protections for immigrant families wary of the federal government’s measures to curb illegal immigration.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) said it will prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents or federal law enforcement from accessing its facilities unless the agents produce a criminal warrant signed by a federal judge.
More than half a million Los Angeles Unified students are back in school with the district’s police force partnering with local law enforcement in an effort to protect its immigrant students. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho stressed the district will provide students with a safe space “regardless of immigration status.”
Parents and students arrive for the first day of school as teachers and volunteers patrol for the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Ninety-Third Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, Aug. 14, 2025.
Daniel Cole/Reuters
This comes as immigrants nationwide are afraid of deportation from school campuses as the administration continues to tout its signature campaign promise.
During the first several months of the president’s second term, Esmeralda Alday, former executive director of dual language and English as a second language migrant education for the San Antonio Independent School District, said fear permeated through the immigrant families in her district unlike anything she had seen before.
Some mixed-status families — where one or both parents are undocumented but the kids are U.S. citizens — unenrolled from the district after Trump took office, according to Alday. She said it was not only due to the perceived threats from ICE but some families also received detention orders in the mail.
“It’s coming at our families from every angle,” Alday told ABC News. “It’s affecting our families from all angles, almost leaving them with no choice but to self deport.”
ImmSchools co-founder Viridiana Carrizales told ABC News that these families now dread dropping their kids off at school — some won’t even leave their homes — because they risk being detained. She claimed that the…
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