Opinion: When Immigration Policy Collides With Schools, Students and the Community Suffer

Opinion

Opinion: When Immigration Policy Collides With Schools, Students and the Community Suffer

Adam Strom

Mon, January 12, 2026 at 6:45 PM UTC

4 min read

The events at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 were a nightmare. Armed Border Patrol agents arrived during dismissal on Wednesday, tackled people on school grounds, handcuffed two staff members and appeared to deploy chemical agents on bystanders — including students. The district canceled classes for the rest of the week. Earlier that day, a woman was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent just blocks away.

As horrifying as that scene was, it’s important to understand that the impacts ripple far beyond Minneapolis. Families across the country are watching and wondering: Could this happen at our school?

The answer, according to new research, is that the fear is already everywhere — even in schools where no enforcement actions have occurred.

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In December, UCLA researchers John Rogers and Joseph Kahne released findings from a nationally representative survey of more than 600 high school principals. The results are staggering: 70% report that students from immigrant families are expressing fear about their safety and their families’ well-being. Nearly two-thirds report students missing school due to immigration policies and rhetoric. More than a third report bullying and harassment directed at immigrant-origin students. And 58% report immigrant families leaving their communities entirely.

These aren’t statistics from border states alone. Principals in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Minnesota describe the same patterns. One Wisconsin principal quoted in the survey recounted overhearing a student tell a classmate: “Just make sure you have your ID with you.”

Perhaps most troubling is what a Texas principal shared: Students who had known one another since third grade were suddenly telling immigrant-origin classmates to “go home.” These weren’t strangers. These were peers who had sat together in class for years — until the political climate gave them permission to see their classmates as not belonging.

Some schools are responding heroically. According to the UCLA study, 78% of principals have created emergency response plans for potential ICE visits. Nearly half have developed protocols for supporting students if parents are detained or deported. Educators are connecting families with legal services, setting up meal trains and creating safe spaces for difficult conversations.

Minneapolis Schools Shut Down for 2 Days in Wake of ICE Clashes, Fatal Shooting

This protective work is essential. But emergency protocols cannot prevent a student from absorbing anti-immigrant rhetoric and directing it at a classmate. Legal services cannot rebuild students’ sense of belonging after someone they trusted tells them they don’t belong. And no amount of planning can undo what students at Roosevelt witnessed yesterday — trusted educators who were supposed to protect them being handcuffed, reports of chemical agents in the air, chaos where there should have been an ordinary after-school dismissal.

America faces a fundamental question: What kind of civic infrastructure have we built in our schools?

For too long, support for immigrant students has been concentrated in specialized programs — English learner instruction, targeted interventions, crisis response — rather than embedded in how schools operate for everyone. When students transition out of those programs, when political winds shift, when armed agents show up at dismissal, these young people discover whether their community is a place where they genuinely belong or whether what felt like acceptance was simply provisional accommodation.

Real belonging means students know in their bones, not just from posters on the wall, that they matter, that their history is part of the school’s story, that adults and peers will stand with them when it counts.

Approximately 26% of school-age children in America come from immigrant-origin families. Many more have classmates, friends and teachers with these backgrounds. They must have the opportunity to attend schools where every student is known. Where diverse experiences are valued in curriculum and daily practice. Where students learn to navigate differences and build relationships across them.

Educators across the country need to be free to do the slow, steady work of transformation — building professional cultures where all teachers sees belonging as their responsibility, weaving migration throughout classroom lessons so students understand it as central to American identity and human experience, creating student-led initiatives where young people become architects of inclusive school cultures.

This work requires consistency, trust, and time — none of which survive when the school day can be upended without warning. Minneapolis just demonstrated what happens when immigration policy collides with the school day: canceled classes, traumatized students and staff, a community in crisis.

Roosevelt High School will eventually reopen. Students will return. But what will they be returning to? What is America going to do to keep young people safe — and build schools into the communities of belonging that every student deserves?

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