The morning after Election Day last year, Melanie Claros, a civics teacher and ESL coordinator at a South Florida school where half the students are Latino, found herself having to do a job beyond her usual duties.
By the end of the day, she recently told NBC News, more than two dozen students had separately approached her to ask about changes to immigration enforcement ahead of another Donald Trump presidency.
“‘Are they going to deport all of us now?’ ‘Who is going to get deported first?’” she recalled students asking her during class.
The concerns have not abated since then, Claros said, noting she knows of at least one student who has already stopped showing up to school for immigration-related reasons. “I am very suspicious that we will have [more] kids that will be withdrawn or just stop showing up to school,” she said.
Claros is one of several educators across six states who told NBC News they have found themselves in the uncomfortable position of fielding questions about potential mass deportations under the Trump administration. Many teachers and administrators are aware of a variety of scenarios that could start playing out very soon: immigration officials asking about a student; a kid who leaves school for the day only to discover that their parents have been detained and no one is home to care for them; students worried about deportation who simply stop coming to class. Educators and advocates say they feel they have to be prepared for these situations, but they are also keenly aware of the risk of backlash that can come with talking about a political issue like this publicly.
This dilemma has left teachers like Claros in disbelief.
She became a teacher knowing she’d have to talk about civics, she said, but “I never in a million years thought that they [students] would ask me and have fears about immigration.”Supporters of Trump’s plans for mass deportations say an increase in immigration enforcement is necessary to decrease the incidence of crime committed by migrants and deter individuals from illegally crossing the border in record numbers. However, critics say they’re concerned about the possibility of family separations and widespread fear among certain communities.
Several educators told NBC they feel it’s in a community’s best interest that kids, regardless of legal status, have the opportunity to go to school. Jasmin Baxter leads the communications office in the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, school district, which has a significant English-learner population. She said the district is committed to making sure all students feel supported.
“You come to school, you’re supposed to feel safe at school. Those outside factors you’re not supposed to be thinking about while you’re getting an education,” Baxter said.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy for school districts to answer questions from families on immigration or talk about what they’re doing to prepare for possible mass deportations.
“It definitely is tricky for us to talk about it,” said one assistant principal in California who asked that their name not be used so they could talk freely about the issue. “Because even if it is like, ‘Here is how we support our students,’ we’d be getting pushback from families and community members.”
Viridiana Carrizales, co-founder of the nonprofit organization ImmSchools, says she’s also seen reluctance from schools to be seen seeking out information on immigration and what to do in the event of an encounter with federal officials.
“Many of them are saying the moment we put our names out there, we become a target,” she said.
Despite this, in the days following the election, ImmSchools received messages from 37 schools it hadn’t previously worked with asking about training opportunities and information for their staff, she said. Just before Christmas, the organization also held a virtual training session with 29 superintendents about how to prepare for any immigration raids or deportations that affect their student populations.
“[Schools] are really afraid and they are trying to figure out ways to best support families through this,” she said.
Educators are also expecting students to begin disappearing from their classrooms altogether, as Claros has already seen happening in her school. Parents may be nervous about being separated from their children if either are detained, or think that their child’s presence in school could lead to authorities learning they are in the country without authorization.
In Michigan, ESL teacher Karen Iglesias said she’s heard students ask if they are going to get deported and had parents tell her they’re scared to drive to their kids’ school.
Cinthya Longoria, an elementary school teacher in north Texas, says she’s trying her best to support parents who feel anxious about the future as she remains uncertain about her own. Longoria is currently a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary legal protection against removal for some immigrants brought to the U.S. without documentation as children. She recently had a parent ask her for reassurance that their family would be OK under the new administration, she said.
