The Trump administration's escalation of immigration enforcement activity and its attempts to curb the protests that have unfolded in Los Angeles in its wake are taking a toll on area schools and their students, California education leaders said.
That toll includes flash-bang grenades that sent a Los Angeles Unified School District elementary school into lockdown and a 4th grader from Torrance Unified School District — which is located in Los Angeles County — being detained and sent to Texas after attending a hearing with his father, per the California Department of Education.
The impact on schools comes amid multi-day protests against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that unfurled in Los Angeles, which prompted President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard and Marines — against California Gov. Gavin Newsom's wishes — in an attempt to quell the unrest.
Newsom filed a lawsuit against Trump on Monday for allegedly illegally federalizing the California National Guard, which he said "needlessly escalated chaos and violence in the Los Angeles region." However, a federal judge on Tuesday declined an immediate emergency order to block Trump's actions and instead scheduled a hearing for Thursday.
Trump's heightened immigration enforcement activity in the area is "causing unnecessary fear, confusion, and trauma for our students and families — many of whom are simply trying to get to and from school and work, and to live with dignity," said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho in a June 6 statement.
Carvalho said the district's schools remain a safe haven, meaning the district would seek to protect students — particularly those with ties to undocumented individuals — from involvement with immigration authorities.
In April, for example, school administrators denied entry to Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement officers who attempted to locate children at LAUSD's Russell Elementary School and Lillian Street Elementary School.
DHS maintained that the officers were conducting "welfare checks." However, U.S. senators from California looking into the incident reported that ICE agents falsely told school staff they had permission from the students’ families to speak with the children.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in May to determine how many welfare checks or immigration enforcement encounters the agency has attempted on school grounds since January, DHS told K-12 Dive the records were being withheld "due to the open status of ongoing law enforcement investigations."
Releasing information to the public related to ICE activity on school grounds "could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings" that are "ongoing," DHS said.
Trump's change in policies allows school raids
While immigration enforcement on school grounds had typically been limited or off-limits altogether since the Clinton administration, the Trump changed that policy immediately upon taking office this time around to allow ICE raids on schools and other sensitive locations like churches and hospitals.
School leaders have pushed back against the policy change, with some saying it negatively impacts student mental health and has even led to decreased attendance as immigrant families fear sending their children to school.
Less than a month after the policy went into effect, Denver Public Schools sued the administration, saying school attendance had dropped “noticeably” across all schools in the district — and particularly in schools with “new-to-country families and where ICE raids have already occurred." DPS agreed this week to drop that lawsuit but said it would file another “should circumstances change,” according to Chalkbeat.
Another suit filed in April by an Oregon-based Latinx organization and faith groups from other states claims the policy has made parents "afraid to send their children to school."
“Teachers cited attendance rates have dropped in half and school administrators saw an influx of parents picking their children up from school in the middle of the day after hearing reports that immigration officials were in the area,” said the lawsuit filed April 28 by the Justice Action Center and the Innovation Law Lab.
Meanwhile, although LAUSD remained open in the wake of the anti-ICE protests, attendance dipped to about 75% on Tuesday, a decrease from the past five day average of about 86% and the 93% overall average for the 2024-25 school year, according to the district's online attendance tracker.
State Superintendent Tony Thurmond warned Trump on Tuesday to "keep your hands off California’s kids," in response to the deployment of tactics like the flash-bang grenades, a nonlethal grenade used by law enforcement to disorient a target through a loud "bang" and flash of light.
"The President’s unchecked, unnecessary deployment of our nation’s military to the city of Los Angeles is deeply dangerous for our children, for our families, and for our country," said Thurmond in a statement. "This has already gone too far."
Thurmond noted that half of all California children have at least one immigrant parent, and 1 in 5 children in California are in mixed-status families — meaning a majority of the children are citizens with parents who have different immigration statuses from each other.
DHS did not respond to K-12 Dive's request for comment in time for publication.
