California Lawmaker Seeks to Keep ICE Agents 1 Mile From Schools

A California lawmaker wants to create a safe zone around schools to protect immigrant students and their parents against the threat of large-scale deportations by President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

State Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez introduced a bill this week in response to concerns that Trump would scrap the federal government’s long-standing policy to generally avoid conducting immigration enforcement actions in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and places of worship. One in five, or 20%, of California children live in mixed-status families where at least one one of their relatives is an undocumented immigrant.

Gonzalez’s bill would prohibit local police from assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the one-mile radius around a school. It also would not allow immigration authorities to enter schools or obtain information about students, their families and school employees without a judicial warrant.

“All California children deserve safe school environments that prioritize student learning, regardless of immigration status,” Gonzalez said in a statement.

Her bill comes two weeks after another state lawmaker proposed barring ICE agents from entering a school or child care center without a statement of purpose, court order and approval from the district superintendent or other supervisors.

The proposals come amid escalating fears of mass deportation as Trump’s inauguration approaches on Jan. 20, 2025. In an interview published by Time magazine last week, Trump said he was willing to enlist the military to round up and deport undocumented immigrants.

Education leaders say his rhetoric is already creating a chilling effect on immigrant children and parents who live in fear of deportation.

“I’ve heard from elementary school teachers experiencing a kid coming to school, just crying and wanting to be held because they’re so worried [about whether] their parent is going to pick them up after school,’” said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, co-founder of National Newcomer Network, a coalition of educators, researchers and advocates dedicated to newcomer education.

She said teachers are concerned the stress will impede student’s ability to learn.

At Oakland International High School, some newcomer students with after-school jobs are facing additional pressure to work more to pay immigration lawyers to fight their cases, said Lauren Markham, director of the school’s learning lab.

Markham expressed concern that the urgency to work more may lead the students to miss classes.

“Our students are incredibly afraid that they or their parents are going to be swept up in immigration raids,” Markham said. “There is a pervasive sense of uncertainty, and this kind of looming, amorphous threat that ‘at any moment I may be sent home’ to, in many cases, a place of danger.”

Oakland Unified School District already has trained staff on how to respond to potential immigration enforcement at schools, and it urges immigrant parents to make a “family safety plan,” including naming a trusted adult to take care of their child in case they get detained or deported.

During Trump’s first term, researchers at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that his immigration policies contributed to increased absenteeism, decreased student achievement and parent disengagement.

The researchers surveyed 3600 educators in more than 700 schools in 12 states and discovered that increased absenteeism led to lower funding for schools, which affected support services for all students, said Patricia Gandara, a co-director of the project.

“Because most of the schools where immigrant students are found are poor schools, they [had] a hard time meeting the very deep needs of the students,” Gandara said. “Even the students who were not from immigrant families were being affected by this because of the climate in the school, the climate in the classroom, and the concern for the other students who were more targeted. So it was having a devastating effect on the schools that most need help,” she said.

She said legislation to beef up protections for immigrant students sends a message to those students that schools have their back.

“One of the really sad things that we heard from teachers was that oftentimes, their best students were giving up. Because the kids would say, ‘I don’t see that I have a future in this country. Why am I knocking myself out to try and go to college if I have no future?” Gandara said. “So if these young people hear that legislators and other people in the schools are really working on their behalf and are trying to protect them, I think that’s helpful.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of schools surveyed by researchers at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The story has been updated to reflect that they surveyed 3600 educators in more than 700 schools in 12 states.