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The Cost of ICE Raids: Fewer Students, Less Money, Missing Parents

There’s an innate tension between school safety and students’ civil rights. The 74’s Kathy Moore keeps you up to date on the news you need to know.

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Two recent stories by reporters here at The 74 demonstrate the ongoing ripple effects of the Trump administration’s massive deportation campaign. One deals with money, the other with home. 

My colleague Linda Jacobson detailed how empty desks are adding up, whether it’s students who are absent from school, families who have been detained or others who’ve left their districts — or fled the country — on their own.

The Trump administration has offered to limit immigration enforcement near schools in negotiations with Democrats, but district leaders say they’re already facing budget cuts because of high absenteeism and lost enrollment. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

States fund districts based on per-pupil enrollment, and in California, that dollar figure comes from daily average attendance. In Minnesota, where immigration enforcement actions, the state requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. Unless an emergency exemption to the rule is granted, one district outside Minneapolis is facing a $1 million hit to its $51 million budget.

“I remember walking in the hallways going, ‘Holy God, where are all the kids?’ ” an employee in another Minnesota district told Linda. “It was eerie.”

Meanwhile, Jo Napolitano looked at what happens when the parents go missing, specifically after being detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jo reports that for their children, thousands of whom are U.S. citizens, this abrupt upheaval often means removal from home andschool.

Some can find themselves, brand-new passports in hand, being sent to their parents’ birth country, which may be totally unfamiliar, or to live with family or friends —unless those adults’ citizenship status is also precarious and they may be too afraid to take them in. An unlucky number are placed in foster care and some are just left alone.

“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” one advocate said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”

Clickandto read the full stories.


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