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From miami Schools across the US, including San Diego, are seeing major declines in enrollment of students from immigrant families.
In some cases, parents have been deported or voluntarily returned to their home countries due to President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Others have moved elsewhere inside the US
In many school systems, the biggest factor is that very few families are coming from other countries. As fewer people cross the U.S. border, administrators in small towns and big cities are reporting fewer new students than usual.
In Miami-Dade County Public schoolsAbout 2,550 students have entered the district from another country so far this school year — down from about 14,000 last year, and more than 20,000 the year before that. School Board Member Luisa SantosAs a young immigrant who attended district schools, she said this trend is “a sad reality.”
“I was one of those arrivals when I was 8 years old,” Santos said. “And this country and our public schools – I’ll never get tired of saying this – gave me everything.”
Collectively, enrollment declines in Miami-Dade erased nearly $70 million from the district’s annual budget, leaving administrators struggling to make up the unexpected shortfall.
The decline in the number of immigrant students has put pressure on enrollment at many traditional public schools, which have seen total numbers decline due to demographic changes and students choosing options such as private schools and homeschooling. Despite high English instruction and social support needs, newcomers to some districts have helped increase enrollment and bring in significant per-pupil funding in recent years.
In North Alabama, albertville City Schools Superintendent Bart Reeves has seen the local economy grow with its Hispanic population, which has been drawn by the area’s poultry processing plants for decades. Albertville will soon get its first Target store, a sign of the community’s growing prosperity.
Reeves district is home to Alabama’s largest Hispanic student population, with approximately 60% identifying as Hispanic. But Reeves said the district’s newcomer academy at a local high school is not enrolling any new students.
“That’s not happening this year because of the border closures,” Reeves said. They expect the decline in enrollment to impact their budget and cause them to lose about 12 teacher positions.
Some students are self-deporting with their families
One Sunday morning in August, Edna, a 63-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, got the phone call she was dreading. Her friend, a Guatemalan mother with seven young children, was detained on immigration charges in Lake Worth, Florida, while she was walking her children out to breakfast.
The family had prepared for this moment. Legal documents were in place granting temporary custody of the children to Edna, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she feared immigration enforcement.
“I’ll stay here, and we’ll be okay,” she remembered telling her oldest child, a 12-year-old boy.
In the weeks that followed, Edna stayed at home with two young children and bussed her five older siblings every day to Palm Beach County Public Schools, where enrollment has dropped by more than 6,000 students this year. One day in September, all seven children boarded a plane to Guatemala to meet their mother, leaving behind their neighborhood friends, band practice, and the only life they ever knew.
Edna said, “My house looks like a garden without flowers.” “They’re all gone.”
The family now lives in a rural part of Guatemala, without access to phone service. School there had already started for the first year, Edna said, and the mother, who herself did not attend school as a child, was keeping them at home and considering whether to enroll them for the next year.
Schools accustomed to newcomers are seeing very few children this year
The decline in the number of immigrants coming to the US was already becoming evident in school registration numbers this summer.
Denver Public Schools enrolled 400 new-native students this summer, compared to 1,500 last summer. Outside Chicago, Waukegan Community Unified School District 60 signed up 100 fewer new immigrant students. And administrators at the Houston Independent School District closed the Las Americas Newcomer School, a program dedicated to children new to the U.S., after its enrollment fell from 111 to just 21 students last year.
This change is visible in places like Chelsea, Massachusetts, a city outside Boston that has long been a destination for new immigrants. The 6,000-student Chelsea Public School system has attracted Central Americans looking for affordable housing, and more recently, the state has placed newly-arrived Haitians in shelters there. This year, there was not the usual influx of newcomers.
“This year has been different. Much quieter,” said Daniel Mojica, director of Chelsea’s Native Information Center.
Over the summer, 152 freshmen signed up for Chelsea Public Schools, compared to 592 new-indigenous students the previous summer.
They are also leaving with something. 844 students have withdrawn from the district since January, compared to 805 during the same period last year. Mojica said a large portion of the students – about a quarter – are returning to their countries of origin.
He attributes this partly to the presence of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers walking the city streets.
“You can feel the fear in the air,” he said.
Teachers worry students are missing out
In San Diego, Principal Fernando Hernandez has enrolled dozens of newcomer students from across Latin America over the past few years. Many made the dangerous journey through the forests of Darien Gap before setting up camp in a park near Perkins K-8 School.
About a third of the students at the school are homeless. Staff have become experts in supporting children facing adversity. As more newcomers arrived, Hernandez noticed that Mexican American students changed their playground dialect to be better understood by their new classmates from Venezuela, Colombia and Peru.
But so far this school year they have not enrolled a single incoming student. Other families did not return when the new school year started.
Hernandez fears the disruption will impact well beyond students’ academic progress. She worries that students are missing opportunities to learn how to empathize, to share, to disagree, to understand each other.
“It’s like a repeat of the pandemic where kids are isolated, locked down, not socializing,” he said.
“These kids need to stay in school,” he said.
Natacha, a parent who moved to California with her family after leaving Venezuela, said she tries to avoid going out in public, but continues to send her daughters to school. Natacha, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears immigration enforcement, said she prepares herself as she drives the girls home every afternoon, scanning the road behind her to make sure no other cars are following her.
“I surrender myself to God,” she said.
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