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This week, we’re taking you inside a school district fighting back against deportations and the culture of fear brought on by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.

_{Credit: Photo illustration: The Hechinger Report; Photo: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report}

What you need to know

When immigration officers began arresting parents and children in New Haven, Connecticut, some students stopped showing up to class. 

The school district has a process in place involving legal counsel and warrant verification before immigration enforcement agents who show up to a school are allowed inside. When a high school student was detained last summer, advocacy groups, his attorney, the teachers union, government officials and school employees pushed for his release. After being shuffled to detention centers across the country for more than a month, he was allowed to return to his community.

Easing this culture of fear is hard when immigration officers roam the community and families are detained on their way to school in the morning. 

“You’re sitting next to them,” said Tabitha Sookdeo, executive director of the grassroots group Connecticut Students for a Dream, of the high schoolers she works with. “And they’re literally shaking.”

This week's newsletter is sponsored by: 

Harmony Academy’s Belonging Together offers six expert-led, practical approaches that help districts strengthen belonging where it matters most. Through virtual sessions, workshops, and coaching, leaders develop actionable plans that support student engagement and attendance, teacher retention, and academic success. 

Explore the six implementation approaches.

How immigration enforcement has disrupted American schools

• Parental stress, raids, and isolation: How immigration enforcement traumatizes even the youngest children (The Hechinger Report)
  

• A Minnesota school district guards against ICE, from dawn to dusk (The New York Times)

• ICE activity on K-12 school grounds (K-12 Dive)

• Hundreds of CPS students protest federal immigration crackdown during school walk-out (Block Club Chicago)

• Growing number of education groups criticize impact of ICE operations on students (Chalkbeat)

From the vault

In 2019, Kate Kilpatrick wrote about a student whose family took sanctuary in a church to hide from ICE.

Become a sponsor

One last thing

Wishing everyone still digging out from last week’s snow a speedy return to classrooms.

_{Dan Paul sleds with his children, Joseph, 4, and Rosie, 9, on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 25, 2026. Some school districts in the Washington, D.C., area are still experiencing disruptions to learning more than a week after a major snowstorm. Credit: Al Drago/Getty Images}

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