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| Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old Ecuadorian boy, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis while returning from school with his father. Source: © Ali Daniels/AP |
ICE raids are being conducted across the country. Even if raids are not being conducted in your city, because all of the news coming out of Minneapolis, it is difficult for young people to not witness these events. As of early 2025, federal guidelines regarding "sensitive locations" (like schools) have been revoked, making it even more crucial for districts to have, and strictly enforce, local protective policies.
The impact on young people is profound. In this blog we draw on an article published by The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. This article is entitled, How ICE Raids Are Affecting Children—And What Schools Can Do and is authored by Nirvi Shah. You can read this entire article here. Below we offer several excerpts. Future blogs will expand on how afterschool programs are responding and how programs can prepare.
“Immigration enforcement actions, including raids and the threat of deportation, severely impact children by inducing chronic stress, fear, and trauma, which leads to increased school absences and emotional distress.” – Google AI
Nirvi Shah writes, “What is immigration enforcement doing to kids and families? And what can youth programs do to protect their students’ mental health and physical safety?
Immigration enforcement actions have intensified in 2025 and 2026, significantly increasing the daily number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention. These operations, which now include raids at schools and daycares, are driving a mental health crisis characterized by "toxic stress" and pervasive fear among immigrant families.
At the end of winter break at the Garlough Environmental Magnet School in West St. Paul, Minnesota, more than 50 students did not return to class.
At the time, federal immigration agents were conducting military-style operations throughout the area, detaining both students and parents as they went to or from school, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl in another town. In January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents killed two protesters and injured many others in Minnesota.
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| Principal Libby Huettl, Garlough Environmental Magnet School. © ISD 197 |
By the end of January, she says their efforts were paying off: The number of kids not showing up to her elementary school was down to seven.
“We are spending a lot of our energy on getting students back to school, however that needs to look,” Huettl says.
Principals around the country report similar patterns in students missing school, but the fear that is keeping students home is especially acute in the Minneapolis area—though protesters and local officials have successfully pressed the federal government to scale back their presence. As of this writing, the federal government announced that 700 agents, out of about 3,000, will leave the area. But, given the Trump administration’s priorities, the overall campaign is unlikely to end anytime soon.
“'This is a devastating time in the education space,' says Alejandra Vázquez Baur, the co-founder of the Newcomers Network, a coalition of educators, researchers, and advocates in 46 states. 'Immigration is becoming one of the leading issues impacting schools.'”
Experts and educators alike say that immigration raids are inflicting a terrible toll on children’s mental health and education. Some school systems have created new rules for addressing ICE visits to their campuses. Others are sharing information with families about their rights, and some parents signed power of attorney agreements that would give another adult the ability to take custody, even briefly, of their children should they be detained. Meanwhile, principals like Huettl are setting up plans in real time for dealing with immigration enforcement in their communities.
Here’s an overview of what ICE raids are doing to kids and how schools are responding to protect their students’ mental health and physical safety.
The nonprofit KFF (formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation) estimates that 1 in 4, or 19 million, children in the U.S. have an immigrant parent. While immigrant students and families are clearly the most affected by federal actions, schools may not know the backgrounds of some of their students—and cannot turn away students based on their status. Some schools use English-language abilities as a proxy, however, for counting how many immigrant students they enroll.
But Vázquez Baur notes the effects of immigration enforcement are hardly limited to these children. “It is not just immigrant students who are staying home from schools,” says Vázquez Baur, who comes from an immigrant family. She ticks off examples: A whole group of students could find themselves stranded because their school bus driver was detained. One student’s babysitter, who helped with dropoff and pickup, is no longer around. Another may find that their best friend suddenly isn’t coming to school anymore. “Your child is going to leave with the idea that school isn’t for some kids,” she says. “This will touch every child in some way—and that was before the violent escalation.”
The ways families are trying to cope create their own side effects, with high school principals telling researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles that when families shelter at home to avoid encountering ICE, their children don’t eat very well. Other kids have become caretakers for younger siblings overnight after a parent was detained.
And these students may not be able to do their schoolwork. Although schools in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas gave students the option of accessing classes online, the pandemic proved this was not a successful version of schooling for many kids. It can result in a slew of side effects, and the same problems during that era of virtual learning may exist now: limited or no access to high-speed internet and a lack of enough, or the right kind of, devices for kids to use for their lessons.
A spike in absences—what Huettl was working through—is one problem that can follow immigration agents’ presence and may involve students of any background. The Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district in North Carolina said more than 27,000 students were absent the first school day after U.S. Border Patrol agents arrived in the city in November. That amounted to nearly triple the number of students absent compared with a week before and was about a fifth of all kids in the 141,000-student district. At school, the federal immigration onslaught has meant more bullying, high school principals told the UCLA researchers.
“’The biggest impact I can speak to is other students making inappropriate comments,’ another principal told researchers at the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, even telling friends: “‘You’re a border hopper, your parents are border hoppers, go back where you came from.’” - High School Principal
Other research, including some that measured the effects of immigration enforcement during the first Trump administration, affirms what many educators already know: A ramp up in activity by federal immigration agents has a corrosive effect on children.
In a research brief last year from the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University, experts cited a study that found “children from immigrant backgrounds who witnessed their parent/s being arrested due to deportation tended to experience changes in sleeping, eating, and higher levels of fear and anxiety compared to children who had not witnessed this event.”
They noted that some amount of stress is required for the healthy development of children, but extended periods of stress or extreme stress can lead to lasting physical and psychological damage. That’s because that kind of exposure can disrupt the way the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain and the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, interact. Together, these organs help the body respond to stress. Too much stress, especially in children, the ASU experts wrote, can lead to long-term issues that impair memory, language development, and learning abilities and increase the risk of heart diseases in young adults.
The researchers compared what happened to Latino and non-Latino white students in places affected by the Secure Communities policy. Latino students, relative to white peers, reported persistent sadness or hopelessness; suicidal ideation; planning or attempted suicide; alcohol and cigarette use; fighting; and poor grades.
The findings, the researchers said, show that the more students were exposed to the intensified enforcement, the sadder or more hopeless they felt.
When children, and adults, see something that could be a threat, and an unexpected one, “it’s going to activate a whole set of evolutionary responses,” says Dr. Kerry Ressler, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Depression and Anxiety Disorders at McLean Hospital and director of its Neurobiology of Fear Laboratory.
“It’s everything we think of as a panic attack,” he says: increased breathing, an upset stomach, a dry mouth, wanting to run away. And people don’t have to experience that threat directly to trigger this physical reaction, Ressler says. “A lot of studies have shown that secondary viewing of somebody else being threatened still activates a lot of your own systems.”
Images of the clashes between Minnesota residents and ICE agents have been difficult to avoid on television and social media for weeks. Beyond that, residents of all ages have witnessed agents driving through neighborhoods, waiting outside churches and near school bus stops, and taking into custody a 5-year-old child wearing a Spider-Man backpack and bunny hat.
“The onslaught of ICE activity in our community is inducing trauma and is taking a toll on our children, taking a toll on our families, our staff, our community members. This surge has changed nearly everything about our daily lives. The kids just want to come to school. They want to be in person learning. They thrive. They’re happy in school.” - Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District, said during a press conference in January.
According to researcher Dr. Kerry Ressler, “For children from lower-resourced environments, where food, money, or family support are scarce, or those who have experienced other trauma, witnessing or learning about immigration enforcement activity may trigger their own memories of being abused or tracked or not being safe or not being cared for.” Ultimately, that will cause further trauma, regardless of how that looks from child to child.
Below is a list from Google AI on the impacts of increased ICE raids on kids and families:
- Trauma and Mental Health: Raids cause severe, long-term anxiety, depression, and PTSD, with children often fearing they will be separated from their parents.
- Educational Disruption: Fear of raids leads to high absenteeism and, in some cases, students dropping out or transferring schools.
- Family Separation: The fear of, or actual, detention of caregivers destabilizes families, leaving children without adequate care. Aggressive enforcement has led to more frequent separations of children from their primary caregivers, causing severe psychological distress and disrupting essential attachment bonds.
- Surveillance Risks: Increased use of technology and data, such as license plate readers and social security records, deepens fear and distrust in public institutions.
- Increased Detention: The average number of children in ICE custody daily has jumped more than sixfold since early 2025, with some days exceeding 400 children.
- Safety Concerns in Schools: The rescinding of sensitive locations policies has led to enforcement actions near schools, causing chronic absenteeism, drops in enrollment, and a general climate of hypervigilance.
- Mental Health Crisis: Experts report higher rates of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among affected youth. Some children even exhibit regression in eating and sleeping habits.
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| Nirvi Shah |
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