School attendance by immigrant children is plummeting across the country in the face of a “chilling effect” caused by  ICE deportation raids in as many as 20 states.

In the Los Angeles school district alone, more than 13,000 immigrant students have stopped attending classes since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stepped up activity in the region in March.

“Some children are just choosing not to go back to school, especially those who are immigrants,” the founder of advocacy group Our Voice, Evelyn Aleman, told the education news website The 47 Million. “That’s because they know that immigrant children have been arrested or detained by ICE.”

Ms. Alman says that the fear of ICE agents seeking out immigrant children became a real concern in April when federal agents showed up at two schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District asking for “access” to young students. 

The school district, the second largest in the country, currently has around 62,000 English-learning students enrolled –down from more than 75,000 immigrant students during the 2024-25 school year.

The dropoff continues a long-term trend in the district where more than 157,000 English learners were enrolled during the 2018-19 school year. Immigrant students comprised nearly half the district’s student population in 2003.

The ICE visits – which included up to four agents at one time seeking information on students in grades one through six – were the first reported attempts by Homeland Security to enter a school.

Other cities across America have reported even more dramatic declinse in immigrant enrollment.

The Miami-Dade County Public Schools system has admitted about 2,550 students from other countries for the current school year – a fraction of the  nearly 14,000 admitted last year and the more than 20,000 in the year prior, according to The Associated Press.

Denver Public Schools registered 400 newly arrived students this summer, down from 1,500 the previous summer. In Waukegan Community Unified School District 60 near Chicago, enrollment of new immigrant students dropped by 100 students. In Texas, the Houston Independent School District closed its Las Americas Newcomer School – a program designed for recent arrivals to the U.S. – after its student population plummeted to just 21 from 111 last year.

Homeland Security officials have strongly deny searching learning institutions and accuse the media of stoking fear among the public.

“The media is sadly attempting to create a climate of fear and smear law enforcement. These smears are contributing to our ICE law enforcement officers facing 1,000% increase in assaults against them,” The Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement released in September.

“ICE is not conducting enforcement operations at, or ‘raiding,’ schools. ICE is not going to schools to make arrests of children.”

The assurances have failed to ease the anxiety within school systems as the raids branch out to different parts of the country. On Monday, approximately 21,000 students at Charlotte, North Carolina, skipped out on school following weekend ICE raids in the city.

“I was sick when I saw the numbers,” Charlotte’s mayor pro tem, Danté Anderson, said to Newsweek. 

“Our students had a hard time with COVID and remote learning. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have worked hard to get students back on track, and now, in one day, 21,000 students stayed home.”