Two students share a bench during lunch at Rudsdale Newcomer High School in Oakland.
Anne Wernikoff for EdSource
In the first months of the first Trump administration in 2017, a father in Los Angeles was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after dropping his 12-year-old daughter off at school.
The ripple effect was immediate.
“Right away there was a drop in attendance in L.A. schools because parents were thinking, ‘Oh, if I drop off my kids, ICE is going to pick me up,’” said Ana Mendoza, senior staff attorney at ACLU of Southern California and director of the organization’s Education Equity Project. “The need for safety and sanctuary policies became really salient because students weren’t going to schools or families were tentative about their participation in schools.”
In the wake of this year’s presidential election, there is again widespread uncertainty among immigrant…
