Immigration Enforcement Policy and Its Impact on Teaching and Learning in the Nation's Schools

A great deal has been written recently on the topics of immigration, immigration enforcement, and its impact on families and communities. Reporters tend to focus on the human interest stories about children terrified about being ripped from their parents, parents concerned about what will happen to their children and other family members, and the great sense of anxiety with which they live day to day. One story in particular that was published in the Los Angeles Times in July of 2017 and reprinted in local papers and on national television, sent shock waves in immigrant communities across the country. In this case, a man who had lived in the Los Angeles area for more than 20 years, raised his US born children there, and had just dropped his daughter off at school, was arrested and told he would be deported. Until the Trump administration, deportations had been largely focused on people with police records or those crossing illegally at the border. Now, the administration was signaling that apprehensions and deportations would affect long established residents with no or minor infractions, and parents of U.S. born children as they went about their daily business. More recently, the targeting of hundreds of undocumented persons in California in several raids was widely perceived as “payback” for the state’s sanctuary policies and one senator was quoted as saying it was “pure malice.” Many people are left anxious and afraid to even go to work. Children cry in their classrooms for fear their parents will either lose their jobs or not be home when they return from school.