The Impact of a Broken Immigration System on U.S. Students and Schools

Children of undocumented immigrants exist in permanent limbo. They are fearful every day that their parents will be deported and wondering if they have any future in the country. Many of these students identify as Latinx. Instead of focusing on their education, these students struggle with this uncertainty and as a result are often absent from school or inattentive. Their teachers also struggle to motivate them and sometimes to protect them. The so-called broken immigration system hurts schools and creates victims across the spectrum of race and ethnicity in the United States, but it is especially acute for these students. This collaborative research brief updates and builds on a previous analysis of a 2017-2018 survey examining the harmful impacts of immigration enforcement on Latinx children of undocumented immigrants. It summarizes key findings from "Schools Under Siege: The Impact of Immigration Enforcement on Educational Equity," but updates the analysis with more recent data. [Additional collaborators of the research brief are the Center for the Transformation of Schools, School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA and the Latino Policy & Politics Institute, Meyer and Renee Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA.]