A nationally representative survey by the EdWeek Research Center found that 39 percent of educators working with immigrant students reported reduced attendance linked to federal immigration enforcement by spring 2026, up from 24 percent in fall 2025. The survey of 753 district leaders, principals, and teachers was conducted online from March 25 to May 5, 2026, and followed a fall 2025 survey of 693 educators.
The share of educators reporting no impact from enforcement fell from 35 percent in the fall to 23 percent in the spring, suggesting the effects broadened across schools. The survey is the first nationally representative snapshot of enforcement-related attendance disruption during the 2025-26 school year.
Student anxiety or fear was reported by 57 percent of educators working with immigrant students, up from 50 percent in fall. In urban districts, that figure reached 81 percent, and 59 percent of urban educators reported reduced attendance, compared with 43 percent in the fall. The disparities by district size were also wide: 53 percent of educators in districts with 10,000 or more students reported reduced attendance, versus 25 percent in districts with fewer than 2,500 students.
Policy context: the rescission of protected-area limits
The survey data comes after a major federal policy shift. On January 20, 2025, Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a memorandum rescinding the October 2021 Mayorkas memorandum that had restricted ICE and CBP enforcement at schools, churches, hospitals, and other previously protected areas. The protected-areas policy had been in place since 2011 under the Obama administration, was maintained through the first Trump administration, and was expanded in 2021 to include school bus stops, playgrounds, and child care centers.
DHS stated on January 21, 2025, that the rescission means criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest, and that it was not necessary for the head of the agency to create bright line rules regarding where immigration laws are permitted to be enforced.
How the same dynamic has played out elsewhere
Multiple Minneapolis-area school districts offered temporary virtual learning options during heightened immigration enforcement operations in early 2026, with roughly half the student body at one school opting in, Education Week reported. Districts in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania also saw families and educators call for virtual learning as fear drove up absenteeism.
Between November 2024 and October 2025, 19 states initiated 33 bills regarding undocumented immigrants' access to public education and other social services, according to policy tracking by NYU researcher Sophia Rodriguez. These ranged from exclusionary measures, such as Tennessee HB0145 and Indiana HB1394, to protective ones, such as the Illinois Safe Schools Act and the California Safe Haven Schools Act.
What the research evidence says
A working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, published in April 2026, studied a midsized northeastern district with a large immigrant population. Researchers found that daily absence rates among foreign-born students increased by approximately two percentage points from January 2025 through June 2025. The increase was sustained over time and not limited to specific enforcement events. Prior to 2025, those foreign-born students had better attendance than their U.S.-born peers, and the district had made post-pandemic attendance gains that were subsequently lost. Researchers noted the effect might have been larger in a district with less family engagement and fewer multilingual staff.
Stanford professor Thomas Dee's prior research has linked immigration enforcement activity near schools to lower attendance, achievement loss, evidence of anxiety disorders, and harmful implications for students' long-term educational attainment. Dee characterized the current policy choices around interior enforcement as harming learning and child development along multiple dimensions, Education Week reported.
A survey by the South Carolina Multilingual Learner Educator Network, conducted in February and March 2025, found that 49 percent of respondents saw a moderate, significant, or extreme change in student attendance due to immigration enforcement, and 78 percent noticed a change in the emotional well-being of multilingual learners, Education Week reported.
A UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access survey of 606 high school principals (conducted June through August 2025) found that close to two-thirds reported students from immigrant families had missed school due to policies or political rhetoric related to immigrants, and 57.8 percent said immigrant parents and guardians had left the local community in response to enforcement fears.