Students walk to their classrooms at a public middle school in Los Angeles, California, September 10, 2021. - Children aged 12 or over who attend public schools in Los Angeles will have to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by the start of next year, city education chiefs said September 9, 2021, the first such requirement by a major education board in the United States.
Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
MIAMI—As "back-to-school" ads start to populate media, and teachers prepare to have their classrooms filled across the country starting August 10, Latino children, now roughly one in four American students, get ready to return under the weight of deportation raids, empty desks, and rising anxiety.
Hispanic children make up the largest and fastest-growing share of the nation's classrooms, and this school year they are returning to campuses marked by a new tension: the pull of the classroom against the fear of immigration enforcement waiting outside the school gates.
About 27% of the roughly 50.6 million students enrolled in the nation's public PreK-12 schools are Latino, nearly 14 million children, and analysts project that figure will climb to around 30% by 2030. Beyond the school walls, close to 19 million Latino children live in the United States, accounting for about a quarter of all American children under 18.
Who they are
The image of the Latino student as a recent arrival is largely outdated. According to the latest Census figures, about 93% of Latino children in the U.S. were born here, making them citizens. Roughly 11% are "first generation," foreign-born themselves, while a majority, around 52%, are "second generation," the U.S.-born children of at least one immigrant parent.
The remaining share are third generation or higher.
Meet the Latina Mothers in the U.S. Right NowRead more Meet the Latina Mothers in the U.S. Right NowBut the immigrant experience still runs through the majority of these households. More than half of Latino children live with at least one foreign-born parent, and researchers estimate roughly one in four has a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant. That means even U.S.-citizen children can carry the daily fear that a parent might not come home, around three million of them.
They span every age group, from prekindergarteners to high school seniors, and they are heavily concentrated in states such as California, Texas, and Florida. In California, Latino students are now 62% of public school enrollment.
Spanish speakers and English learners
Language remains a defining challenge for a large slice of these students. The nation's public schools enroll about 5 million English learners, and roughly 77% of them are Latino, overwhelmingly Spanish speakers. First- and second-generation Latino children are far less likely to be fluent in English than their peers whose families have been in the country for generations, which places continued demand on English as a Second Language (ESL) and bilingual programs.
Advocates warn that support for these students may be eroding. Some educators point to a federal shift declaring English the official language, which they say has been paired with revised guidance suggesting schools no longer must accommodate English learners as extensively as before. Where language testing and instruction are disrupted, the consequences show up quickly: in one district where fear pushed roughly half the student body into virtual learning, middle-school English learners showed virtually no growth on state proficiency exams when growth was expected.
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The fear factor
The sharpest change this year is the climate of fear. In January 2025, the federal government rescinded a longstanding policy that had shielded "sensitive locations," including schools, playgrounds and school entrances, from immigration enforcement. Since then, tracking by education outlets has documented more than a dozen instances of immigration agents on or near school property.
The effect on attendance has been measurable. A Stanford study found that daily student absences jumped 22% across five Central Valley districts in California following raids early in 2025, with the largest increases among the youngest students. A separate analysis from Brown University's Annenberg Institute found that daily absence rates among foreign-born students rose by about two percentage points after the change in administration, and by as much as six points among 11th graders, with attendance dipping even when an enforcement vehicle was merely parked a block or two from campus.
National surveys echo the pattern. The Urban Institute found that about 10% of adults in immigrant families reported keeping their children home from school over enforcement concerns. In a survey of educators taken in the 2025-26 school year, the share citing reduced student attendance rose from roughly 24% in the fall to about 39% by spring, while those reporting student anxiety and fear climbed to 57%. The effects were most acute in large, urban districts.
EL PASO, TX - MAY 19: A recently arrived migrant from Honduras worships, as she is prayed over by local church members, during Sunday services at a church serving as a shelter for migrants who are seeking asylum on May 19, 2019 in El Paso, Texas. For most of the migrants, it was their first Sunday church service since arriving in the U.S. After being released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the shelter, asylum-seekers are then normally transferred from the shelter to their U.S. sponsors as they await their asylum requests. Approximately 1,000 migrants per day are being released by authorities in the El Paso sector of the U.S.-Mexico border amidst a surge in asylum seekers arriving at the Southern border.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Empty desks, shrinking budgets
Enrollment numbers tell part of the story. Los Angeles Unified, the nation's second-largest district, began the current school year down more than 16,000 students and reported a roughly 4% enrollment decline; Miami-Dade saw a similar drop. In Chicago, Latino enrollment fell from about 153,820 students to 146,862 in a single year, and the district reported an uptick in Latino absences tied to fear of a heightened federal presence. Statewide, California lost more than 48,000 Latino students, a 1.5% decline.
Educators caution that immigration is not the only force at work: falling birth rates, the cost of living, families relocating, and the growth of school-choice programs all play a role. But the enforcement climate compounds an existing budget squeeze: because district funding is tied to average daily attendance, every empty seat drains resources that serve all students, regardless of immigration status.
Amid the fear, school leaders have emphasized that the core legal protections remain intact. Under the 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe, every child has the right to a free public education regardless of immigration status, and federal privacy law bars schools from handing over student records without a judge-signed warrant.
Districts have responded with virtual learning options, "know your rights" letters to families, partnerships with immigration attorneys and community groups, and, in some neighborhoods, parents, teachers and neighbors walking students to school together. Researchers note that districts with strong, longstanding ties to immigrant communities have blunted the worst of the attendance declines.
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Tags: Education, School, Latinos, Immigration, ICE
