The effects of heightened immigration enforcement across the country continued to ripple through K-12 schools this spring, with educators reporting increased student anxiety and fear, higher absenteeism, and greater counseling needs, according to new national survey data.
The EdWeek Research Center surveyed 753 district leaders, principals, and teachers online from March 25 to May 5, asking them how federal immigration enforcement actions have affected their schools and how educators have responded. The spring survey updates educators’ responses to similar questions asked of 693 educators last fall.
Educators working with immigrant students were less likely this spring to say immigration enforcement has had no impact than they were in the fall, and those working in urban and larger districts are more likely to report widespread effects.
Since last fall, the Trump administration’s immigration policies have increasingly disrupted immigrants’ lives, including those with various forms of legal status. Large-scale enforcement operations in large urban areas, like Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis this January, have also turned violent, with federal agents killing two American citizens in the Twin Cities.
“There were agents that were pulling cars over and knocking on doors in the direct vicinity of the school, sometimes within sight of the school,” said Bill Nelson, a middle school English-language development teacher at Community of Peace Academy, a public charter school in St. Paul, Minn., about federal immigration agents in the area earlier this year.
While large-scale enforcement operations are waning nationally, educators still report federal agents’ presence in their communities, leading to ripple effects in schools.
In a statement to the New York Times, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said President Donald Trump’s immigration policy “will always be doing what’s best for the American people.”
Here’s how heightened national immigration enforcement shaped schools during the 2025-26 academic year.
Fewer educators report ‘no impact’ from immigration enforcement
Both the fall and spring EdWeek Research Center surveys asked educators working with immigrant students to identify how, if at all, federal immigration enforcement affected their immigrant students during the current school year.
In the fall survey, conducted Sept. 24 to Nov. 3, the top two responses were students expressing anxiety and fear (50%) and no impact (35%). This shifted in the spring to more educators reporting anxiety and fear among their students (57%) and reduced student attendance. In the fall survey, 24% of educators cited student absences as an effect of immigration enforcement. This spring, that was closer to 39%.
Meanwhile, the percentage of educators citing no impact fell to 23%.
These effects appeared to be more acute in large, urban districts.
Among educators in urban districts, 81% reported student anxiety or fear in the spring, up from 66% last fall, and 59% reported reduced student attendance this spring, up from 43% in the fall.
The effects also broke down in a similar pattern depending on district size: This spring, 53% of educators in districts with 10,000 or more students reported reduced attendance among immigrant students, compared with 45% in districts with 2,500–9,999 students and 25% in districts with fewer than 2,500.
Research studies from this school year have also found growing student absences due to both real and perceived threats of immigration enforcement in their communities.
At ELLIS Prep in New York City, where all students are newly arrived immigrants, student absences this year have grown enough to lead school leaders to lower enrollment projections for the fall, said Eric Marquez, a history teacher at the school and a recipient of the National Newcomer Network’s fellowship for teachers sharing stories of their experiences working with immigrant students.
While the school hasn’t experienced a large-scale enforcement operation akin to schools in Minneapolis, it did make headlines last May when federal immigration officials arrested a student, Dylan Lopez Contreras, at a Manhattan courthouse after his asylum hearing.
The case sparked an outcry from the school community. Ten months later, Contreras was released from immigration detention and returned to ELLIS Prep. His immigration case remains in legal limbo.
Some educators, like Nelson in St. Paul, also a National Newcomer Network fellowship recipient, say the effects of immigration enforcement can be long-lasting.
At the height of federal enforcement in the area, Nelson’s school offered virtual learning options to all families. About a third of the students in the school are English learners, not all immigrants themselves. Roughly half the student body opted in to virtual learning as families grew fearful of racial profiling by federal agents, Nelson said.
The shift disrupted instructional time and complicated the school’s efforts to track attendance. Plus, Nelson added, students weren’t concentrating in class.
Operation Metro Surge coincided with state language proficiency testing for English learners. Scheduling these exams became difficult. Now that results are back, educators found there was virtually no growth in the middle school grades when growth was expected. Nelson said it is unclear whether students’ performance reflects their actual language proficiency or high anxiety on the day of the exam due to immigration officers’ presence in the area.
“It’s muddied the data,” Nelson said.
Schools respond with more counseling, support
Both the fall and spring EdWeek Research Center surveys asked educators working with immigrant students how, if at all, their district or school responded to federal immigration enforcement during the 2025-26 school year.
Educators last fall were most likely to report no response (42%) or that their schools were sharing information about immigrant students’ rights (27%). In the spring, educators were most likely to report their schools were providing additional counseling or mental health support to students who have expressed fear and anxiety (36%), with fewer saying their schools had no response (33%).
Back in the fall, only 26% of educators reported their schools or districts were providing additional counseling.
Urban districts again reported the most significant changes: 54% of urban educators said their school or district was providing additional counseling or mental health support (up from 39% last fall), compared with 37% in suburban districts and 26% in rural/town districts.
In general, educators in rural/town districts were the least likely to report effects from and responses to immigration enforcement.
During the height of Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities area, Nelson referred at least a half dozen students to school counselors as students spoke to him about family members who had gone missing.
The middle school’s social worker brought in interns from local universities to help out with the increased mental health needs of Latino students, and community partners helped out as well, he said.
At ELLIS Prep, students didn’t express fear or anxiety in class, but advocated for the release of their detained classmate, Contreras, and the freshman school counselor hired a former student as a paid intern so current students would feel more at ease discussing their concerns, Marquez said.
In both surveys, educators were asked whether their schools had any protocol in place for what to do if federal immigration agents requested access to a school building or student information.
Responses remained largely the same from the fall to the spring, with 72% of educators working with immigrant students saying their school or district had formal or informal protocols in place this spring. The remainder (28%) said they did not have any protocols.
Nelson’s school already had a policy in place ahead of this year’s federal operation addressing what school staff should do if federal agents attempted to enter a school building. School leaders reiterated and widely shared these protocols this January at the height of the Twin Cities operation, which Nelson found helpful, particularly when working in a predominantly immigrant community.
He said he’s now paying much closer attention to immigration policy news. He’s also more attuned to how to connect families with local resources.
“Contending with the heightened fears and the heightened needs of our families is now part of what I do, and that wasn’t so much the case in the past,” Nelson said.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
