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shortly after the President donald trump After taking over in January, Centronia Bilingual Preschool staff began practicing what to do Immigration and Customs Enforcement The officers came to the door. As ICE became a regular presence in their historically Latino neighborhoods this summer, teachers stopped taking kids to nearby parks, libraries and playgrounds that were once considered extensions of the classroom.
And in October, the school canceled its beloved Hispanic Heritage Month parade, when immigrant parents typically dress their children in the uniforms and football jerseys of their home countries. ICE had begun detaining staff members, all of whom have legal status, and school officials were concerned about attracting more unwanted attention.
This all happened before ICE officers arrested a teacher Spanish immersion in preschool chicago In October. The incident left immigrants working in child care feeling fearful and unsafe, as well as the families who depend on them.
Trump’s push for the largest mass deportation in history has had an outsized impact on the child care sector, which is heavily dependent on immigrants and already strained by a labor shortage. Immigrant child care workers and preschool teachers, most of whom are working and living in the U.S. legally, say they are worried about potential encounters with ICE officers. Some have left the field, and others have been forced out due to changes in immigration policy.
At Centronia, CEO Myrna Peralta said all employees must have legal status and work authorization. But the presence of ICE, and the fear it creates, has changed the way schools operate.
“It really dominates all our decision making,” Peralta said.
Instead of taking children on walks around the neighborhood, staff members push children on walks around the hallways. And when the school ended its partnership with the local library, the staff converted a classroom into a mini-library.
Child care industry depends on immigrants
Schools and child care centers were once off limits to ICE officers to keep children out of harm’s way. But those rules were eliminated shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Instead, ICE officers are urged to use “common sense.”
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin defended ICE officers’ decision to enter the Chicago preschool. He said the teacher, who had a work permit and was later released, was riding in a car that was being pursued by ICE officers. She got out of the car and ran into the preschool, McLaughlin said, adding that the teacher was arrested “not at the school, but on the porch.” The man who was driving went inside the preschool, where officers arrested him.
About one-fifth of America’s child care workers were born outside the United States and one-fifth are Latino. In some places, especially large cities, the proportion of immigrants is much higher: In the District of Columbia, California, and New York, about 40% of the child care workforce is foreign-born, according to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.
Immigrants to the region tend to be better educated than those born in the United States. People from Latin America help meet the growing demand for Spanish-language preschools like Centronia, where some parents enroll their children to motivate them to learn a second language.
The American Immigration Council estimated in 2021 that more than three-quarters of immigrants working in early care and education were living and working in the US legally. Preschools like Centronia conduct rigorous background checks, including verifying that employees have work authorization.
Beyond deportation efforts, the Trump administration has stripped legal status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants in recent months. Many of them had fled violence, poverty or natural disasters in their homes and had received Temporary Protected Status, which allowed them to live and work legally in the US, but Trump ended those programs, forcing many out of their jobs and out of the country. Last month alone, 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants lost their protected status.
Centronia lost two employees when it lost its TPS, Peralta said, and a Nicaraguan immigrant who worked as a teacher left on his own. Tierra Encantada, which runs Spanish immersion preschools in several states, had a dozen teachers leave when it lost its TPS.
Fear is also affecting those living legally in America
In Centronia, a staff member was detained by ICE while walking on the street and detained for several hours, during which time she was unable to contact coworkers and tell them where she was. He was released the same evening, said Joangeli Hernandez-Figueroa, the school’s site director.
Another staff member, teacher Adelmira Kitchen, said she was stopped by ICE while on her way to work in September. The officers demanded him to step out of his car so they could question him. Kitchens, an American citizen who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, said she refused and eventually they let her go.
“I felt my rights were violated,” Kitchens said.
Hernandez-Figueroa said the increased ICE presence in the city amid the federal intervention has taken a toll on workers’ mental health. Some people have gone to the hospital because of panic attacks in the middle of the school day.
When the city sent mental health counselors to schools earlier this year as part of a partnership with the Department of Behavioral Health, school leadership asked them to work with teachers rather than students, concerned that their suffering would spill over into the classroom.
“If the teachers are not good,” Hernandez-Figueroa said, “the children will not be good either.”
It is not that only adults are feeling more worried. At a Guidepost Montessori school in Portland, Oregon, teachers noticed changes in preschoolers in the weeks following ICE arrests near the school in July. After catching a father taking his child to school, officers encountered him in the school parking lot and tried to arrest him. In the ensuing commotion, the school went into lockdown: Children They were pulled out of the playground, and teachers played loud music and asked the children to sing to stop them from screaming.
Amy Lomanto, who heads the school, said teachers have noticed more anger among students, and more students are retreating to what the school calls the “regulation station,” an area in the main office where there are fidget toys that children can use to calm themselves.
She said what happened at her school highlighted that even wealthy communities, such as those served by the school, are not immune from exposure to these types of incidents.
“With the current situation, more and more of us are likely to experience such trauma,” he said. “That level of fear is now becoming very pervasive throughout our society.”
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