Since the start of his second term, President Trump has taken sweeping actions targeting immigrants of all kinds in the U.S. From challenging birthright citizenship to lifting bans on immigration arrests in schools and churches, the administration’s plan to deport millions is creating fear among many families and could have significant effects on communities. While schools can not track a student’s documentation status thanks to a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe, some states are trying to challenge that. And as first reported in Education Week, deportation efforts could affect school budgets. Ilana Umanksy is an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. She joins us to share more on the effects mass deportation could have in Oregon schools.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Since the start of his second term, President Trump has taken sweeping actions targeting immigrants of all kinds. That includes challenging birthright citizenship, lifting the ban on immigration arrests in schools and churches, and promising to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. We’re going to focus right now on the effects these actions could have or are having on schools and education.
Ilana Umanksy is a sociologist who studies the policies that affect the experiences of immigrant and multilingual students in this country as an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Ilana Umanksy: Thanks so much for having me.
Miller: I want to start with the big picture. You look at education and immigration from a sociological perspective. What role do public schools play in this country where people whose families come from other countries, whether they’re here legally or not?
Umanksy: Well, I think the answer to that is that schools play more or less the same role for immigrant families and students as they do for all students in the U.S., which is that they are our way towards opportunity. They shape who we become in our lives and fulfilling our full potential.
Miller: I’m fascinated by that answer because I feel like we’re so used to hearing about the differences, especially now. Certainly there are plenty of people who are born here who don’t have fears that they or their parents will just be kicked out of this country, but you’re emphasizing the similarities.
Umanksy: That’s right. These are all kids. These are all students in our schools. And one of the things that’s critical to know is that immigrant students, undocumented students, they all have the right to attend U.S. public schools.
Miller: This is something that I have to say – I don’t think I had heard about this particular U.S. Supreme Court case until I started prepping for this conversation we’re having right now. Can you tell us what the Supreme Court ruled in the Plyler v. Doe case in 1982?
Umanksy: Yeah, absolutely. This was a case that came up because there were some districts in Texas and other states that were either barring undocumented students from enrolling in school outright or they were trying to charge them to enroll in public schools. And what the Supreme Court ruled is that that is not OK. That undocumented students, like all students, have the right to free public education. So that means they can enroll in public schools,
they cannot be charged tuition or any other fees for enrolling in those schools.
Importantly, they can’t be asked about their documentation status. Documentation status is irrelevant to enrolling in public schools, so they cannot be asked about their documentation status. And once in schools, they have the same rights as any other students. So they have the right to free and reduced-price lunch if they’re eligible for it. They have the right to special education services if they’re eligible for it. So, according to the Supreme Court ruling, undocumented students have every right that those documented students have in our public school system.
Miller: There have been a few challenges to Plyler over the years – none of them succeeded. Where are states trying to challenge this now and what are those states trying to do?
Umanksy: So, unfortunately, we’re seeing state measures in a number of states right now trying to undermine Plyler. I know Texas, Indiana, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Tennessee. And they’re trying to do a number of things. They’re trying to block students from enrolling, requiring proof of citizenship to be able to enroll or charging undocumented students to enroll. And I think one of the aims here is to push these cases up to the Supreme Court to try to overturn Plyler, given the current Supreme Court makeup.
Miller: If it does make it to the court, do you have a gut feeling for how this current court … which is much more conservative than the one that decided this in 1982, and even that ruling was 5 to 4, so it was narrow. Do you have a gut feeling for how the current court would approach this issue?
Umanksy: That’s a good question and I can’t say that I do have a gut feeling. I guess I feel very strongly, like it is in the best interest of everyone in this country that all students have the right to attend public schools. And I hope that the Supreme Court would see that and understand that. The consequences of having a large population of students that does not have the right to attend school would be devastating for the country, in many different ways.
Miller: Well, let’s take those, because this is obviously a very live political issue as well as a looming legal one. So let’s start with the students and families themselves, and then we can move out more societally or economically. But what are the effects for individual kids and families?
Umanksy: Well, the effect, of course, would probably end up being different state-to-state if Plyler were overturned. So, one thing we might see is a lot of movement between states. But for a family that cannot send their kids to school, of course that has just monumentally life changing consequences for the students themselves but also for the full family, because now there are individuals in that family that can’t go to work because they’re home taking care of their kids, for instance. Yeah, so I think it would be very devastating and cause a tremendous amount of upheaval nationally.
Miller: Well, that gets us to the societal questions. If you tried to make this moral argument and people didn’t seem to respond to it, what is a societal or financial argument that you would make?
Umanksy: Oh, well, think of the implications on the economy, for instance, of having this whole population of parents or extended family that can no longer work. That has an immense economic impact on the country, while also having a group of children who are growing up without access to public schools. They’re not able to contribute to the country in the same way. One of the things that we know and is very well documented is that immigrant students are some of the highest performing students in the country. So these students are going on to be business leaders, engineers, scientists, artists, writers. Our country relies on the brilliance and potential of immigrant students.
So it would be very, very detrimental to the country to have a group of students that didn’t have the right to school. It also would create an underclass within our country, an official underclass. We already have a lot of social and racial stratification, but this would be really an official underclass, a group of students that did not have the right to attend school in the same way that other students had.
Miller: So we have been talking so far about the possibility of a major overturning of a 40-year old judicial precedent. But even short of that, what effect could what’s happening right now – immigration crackdowns or fears of immigration crackdowns – have on attendance?
Umanksy: We have seen a real surge in research on this question in the last 10 years, largely because of the first Trump administration. So we now know a lot about this. We know that both increased immigration enforcement, as well as, as you said, the fear of increased immigration enforcement has large impacts on attendance, enrollment, student well-being and achievement.
You asked specifically about attendance, so we have strong evidence that ICE activity decreases attendance and increases chronic absenteeism. So you can imagine that decreased attendance and chronic absenteeism then have these downstream effects on students’ achievement in school and the work that teachers are able to do, because they’re having to backtrack and review material that students are missing. So attendance is one of the big impacts.
We also see large impacts on enrollment. One recent study found that communities that were partnering with ICE resulted in a 10% drop in Latinx student enrollment. So we see this as particularly impacting the Latinx student population nationally. And this isn’t just foreign-born students, it’s also U.S.-born students. That’s because fear is rampant right now in the U.S. amongst immigrant communities and specifically Latinx immigrant students.
Miller: What are you expecting in Oregon through all of this? It is worth mentioning that this is a sanctuary state where public officials cannot cooperate with federal immigration enforcement actions.
Umanksy: That’s right. Yes. So, Oregon is a sanctuary state; however, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the order that ICE not operate in schools. So if ICE comes to schools with a warrant, schools are legally obligated to follow ICE’s orders. Sanctuary status doesn’t fully protect students or their families.
So yeah, I would expect to see, and I believe we are already seeing – what I’m hearing from partners here in Lane County, as well as from the Oregon Department of Education – steep declines in attendance and enrollment of students. But also, more broadly, the health and well-being of our students in the state is declining. Students are disengaging, they’re having difficulty concentrating in school. We’re seeing lower aspirations with regard to attending college, more challenging classroom behaviors and also upticks in the prevalence of bullying incidents. I think that all the anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions that we’re seeing at the federal level are emboldening discriminatory actions that we see even in the classroom.
Miller: Ilana, thanks very much.
Umanksy: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: Ilana Umanksy is an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s College of Education.
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