\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took her, they took her, they took her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were some of the words Cora Mu\u00f1oz, the Wilbur Cross high school assistant principal, could discern while on the phone with the guardian of one of her students. As the caller sobbed and struggled to speak, Mu\u00f1oz realized that immigration enforcement agents had detained a kid from Wilbur Cross, the high school she helps lead.<\/p>\n
Again.<\/p>\n
There was a reason why Mu\u00f1oz was a go-to contact for the student and her guardian: she \u2013 and New Haven public schools more broadly \u2013 have worked hard to earn the trust of immigrant families in their diverse district, even as the second Trump administration has made it easier for immigration officers to enter schools and launched a mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s teachers and administrators have nurtured deep relationships with immigrant-serving organizations and helped kids access resources \u2013 attorneys, social workers, food \u2013 when needed. They\u2019ve hosted sessions to inform students about their rights and sent home cards with legal information in case of an encounter with immigration officers. And when the worst has happened \u2013 when someone\u2019s child or parent has been detained, which has occurred over and over in recent months \u2013 they have taken immediate action, writing letters in support of the family member\u2019s freedom and raising money alongside a larger coalition of advocates trying to bring that person home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn these moments where it\u2019s hard, you show up,\u201d said Mu\u00f1oz, \u201cand you do what you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Cora Mu\u00f1oz, the assistant principal at Wilbur Cross high school.<\/span> Photograph: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n Yet nothing has been able to entirely snuff out the fear of deportation inside the city\u2019s schools, say students and educators. That may have contributed to a decline this October in the number of English language learner students enrolling; their numbers dropped by more than 2,000, or nearly 3.8%, across Connecticut between fall 2024 and fall 2025, and by 7.3% percent in New Haven, with many immigrant families who were expected to return to school simply disappearing.<\/p>\n Chronic absenteeism rates fell in New Haven during the 2024-25 academic year. But after Donald Trump took office, students said their families told them to skip extracurriculars or early college courses at a university campus in case immigration enforcement was around. For some, a college degree has started to feel more out of reach, as they adjust their dreams to fit within a new anti-immigrant reality. Teachers have seen kids stop participating in class after friends have been detained and they wonder if they could be next.<\/p>\n \u201cI live with fear,\u201d said Darwin, an 18-year-old student from Guatemala who has lived in New Haven for two years. His last name, like those of others in this story, is being withheld because of his immigration status. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t even want to attend school because it makes me afraid to go out of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n In many school districts around the country, immigrant enrollment is down, as far fewer asylum seekers are able to reach the US and some immigrants have chosen to return their countries to avoid detention. That said, the consequences of Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign on immigrants\u2019 education vary greatly depending on the community, its demographics and the level of enforcement activity there, said Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 education research at the DC-based Migration Policy Institute\u2019s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are definitely hearing anecdotally that there are kids not going to school,\u201d Sugarman said. \u201cObviously, losing a whole year of education or however long they\u2019re not in school, they are missing out on opportunities to develop their content knowledge, to learn literacy, to develop English, and also to develop academic skills in their native language.\u201d<\/p>\n With seven institutions of higher learning in the area, New Haven is known as a college town. But it is also a city of immigrants: more than one in six New Haven residents are foreign-born, a statistic that underscores a point of pride for many who welcome the city\u2019s diversity. Families in the public school system speak more than 70 languages.<\/p>\n … My obligation is to keep every single one of my children safeMadeline Negr\u00f3n<\/p>\n At the Roberto Clemente Leadership academy, a K-8 school with around 430 students, notices go home in English, Spanish, Pashto and Arabic. The school\u2019s front doors have welcome signs posted in multiple languages. And on a bright red poster in the hallway, photos of beaming children surround a message: \u201cWe all smile in the same language.\u201d<\/p>\n When Trump, who has argued that immigrants are \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country\u201d, nixed guidance in January that had generally restricted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from going into schools to arrest people, Madeline Negr\u00f3n, the New Haven public schools superintendent, was prepared. Ahead of Trump\u2019s inauguration, her team reviewed how the district had protected students during his first term and in what ways they could fortify their response. They developed a district-wide policy on how to act if ICE officers sought to enter their buildings. It involves a series of steps \u2013 including legal counsel\u2019s verification of a valid warrant \u2013 before immigration agents would ever be allowed in.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout that, nobody, no one, is going to walk through my doors. Because my obligation is to keep every single one of my children safe,\u201d said Negr\u00f3n, who also shared the policy in a letter to parents.<\/p>\n Negr\u00f3n led an effort to train all administrators in the protocol, and then those staff helped to train all 2,900 district employees \u2013 including custodians, cafeteria workers, teachers, security guards and secretaries.<\/p>\n Some schools went even further, holding know-your-rights presentations for students and their families. \u201cThings like a judicial v administrative warrant \u2013 you know, I wish that no kid in New Haven needed to know that,\u201d said Ben Scudder, a social studies teacher at High School in the Community. \u201cBut we live in a world where they do, and their families do, and so we\u2019re gonna make sure that they get the training they need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, ICE hasn\u2019t tried to enter New Haven\u2019s public schools. But outside of the classroom, arrests and family separations abound.<\/p>\n In June, a woman and her two children \u2013 an eight-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, both US citizens \u2013 were in their car going to school when vehicles on the street surrounded them and men in ski masks approached. The kids watched, crying, as the immigration agents handcuffed their mom and led her away.<\/p>\n Staff members at the Roberto Clemente Leadership academy, which the kids attend, fundraised for gift cards to grocery stores and delivery services to help their two students. They wrote support letters for the mother\u2019s immigration case, asking for her release. But around a month later, she was deported to Mexico.<\/p>\n They\u2019re our kids, and they\u2019re being detained in these cagesMatt Brown<\/p>\n Now, whenever the younger sibling sees someone in uniform at school \u2013 a security guard, a police officer \u2013 he asks them why they took his mom, said Adela Jorge, Clemente\u2019s principal.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not able to understand what happened,\u201d Jorge said. \u201cAll he knows is that his mother was taken.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon after that, two Wilbur Cross students were nabbed one after the other. First was an 18-year-old named Esdras, arrested at his summer job, shuffled to detention facilities around the country, and almost put on a removal flight to Guatemala.<\/p>\n After more than a month \u2013 with the help of advocacy groups, his attorney, the teachers union, government officials and school employees who came together during summer break \u2013 Esdras was released. When he returned to Wilbur Cross, he told staff members all he wanted was to be normal, a request they have tried to honor by quietly reintegrating him into classes.<\/p>\n <\/span>Wilbur Cross high school serves about 1,700 diverse students in New Haven.<\/span> Photograph: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n Then, shortly after the start of the new academic year, another student \u2013 the one whose guardian had called Mu\u00f1oz in a panic \u2013 was detained.<\/p>\n \u201cAt first I thought she was mad at me or something,\u201d said 17-year-old Melany, recalling when her friend suddenly stopped responding to phone messages. \u201cBut when she didn\u2019t come to school, it really scared me. And I asked the teachers, but they couldn\u2019t tell me anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Her friend was eventually freed, too. But teachers and administrators say they\u2019re fed up that their students keep being targeted and treated so poorly.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re our kids, and they\u2019re being detained in these cages. And the day before, they were eating pizza in our cafeteria,\u201d said Matt Brown, the Wilbur Cross principal.<\/p>\n Rumors and fears at times disrupt learning. One day in mid-October, around 10.20am, immigration agents in tactical gear were seemingly staging in a park near a New Haven area college, setting off concerns that students were their targets. But about 20 minutes later, the agents instead hit a car wash in Hamden, Connecticut, arresting its workers.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what rights they had in those moments. It didn\u2019t seem like they had any. There were no rights there,\u201d said Laurie Sweet, a state representative whose district includes Hamden. \u201cI think the intention is to cause chaos and make people feel destabilized, and that definitely is what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE took eight people into custody that day, some of them parents of school-aged children. Tabitha Sookdeo, executive director of Connecticut Students for a Dream, said her organization searched school records for the kids, trying to ensure they were okay. But no one could find them.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just hope and pray to God that they were able to have someone to pick them up from school,\u201d Sookdeo said.<\/p>\n Teachers say all of this has made immigrant students quieter, more reserved, more observant \u2013 and more hopeless. Kids who used to exchange greetings with their teachers in the halls now trudge around like the walking dead, or ask for passes to leave the classroom more often.<\/p>\n <\/span>Darwin\u2019s faith is an important part of his life.<\/span> Photograph: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot more sadness, and I\u2019ve seen a lot more students, who are good students, skipping classes. And it\u2019s for no reason except that they just, you know, they have too much going on emotionally to make them go to their classes,\u201d said Fatima Nouchkioui, a teacher of English as a second language at Wilbur Cross\u2019 international academy.<\/p>\n Sookdeo has noticed a drop in students at her organization\u2019s college access program, as they question why they would try to get a college degree when they don\u2019t know whether they\u2019ll be in the US tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re sitting next to them,\u201d she said of the high schoolers she works with. \u201cAnd they\u2019re literally shaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the kids already have a pile of pressures to navigate. In some cases, they are living in the country by themselves, balancing school with jobs that allow them to send money home to parents and siblings. Darwin, for example, came to the US leaving behind his mom and three younger siblings. He lives in New Haven alone \u2013 all to give his family members who remain abroad a better life.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s always the next arrest, constantly looming.<\/p>\n \u201cDo we anticipate having kids detained again?\u201d said Brown. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen anything that would make me think we shouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n This story about fear of deportation was produced by <\/em>The Hechinger Report, a non<\/em>-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThey took her, they took her, they took her.\u201d Those were some of the words Cora Mu\u00f1oz, the Wilbur Cross high school assistant principal, could discern while on the phone with the guardian of one of her students. As the caller sobbed and struggled to speak, Mu\u00f1oz realized that immigration enforcement agents had detained a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[166,6233,11732,13303,5081,1518,2466,2081,107,146,334],"class_list":{"0":"post-42503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-classes","10":"tag-connecticut","11":"tag-customs","12":"tag-enforcement","13":"tag-fear","14":"tag-ice","15":"tag-immigration","16":"tag-keeping","17":"tag-kids","18":"tag-school"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}