Immigration has been at the front of the national conversation for years. Many immigrant children experience challenges adjusting to a new country and culture and being fully included in schools. In families without immigration documentation, the fear of family separation, arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and deportation continues to cause anxiety among children and their families.
Millions of young people in the United States are children of immigrant families. And many immigrant children are feeling high levels of fear and anxiety right now due to the current anti-immigrant political environment. All students in the U.S. have a right to public education, “regardless of a child’s or guardian’s citizenship, immigration status, or English language proficiency. These rights were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark 1982 decision in Plyler v.
We know zero-tolerance policies harm children in schools; they're harming them at our borders as well. In the wake of the Trump administration's 2018 policy on the imprisonment and separation of immigrant families, we hope you'll read and share these resources. Consider how you can support the children in your classroom—and beyond.
Immigrant communities continue to strengthen our diverse democracy. Through community organizing, immigrant children and their families are finding ways to navigate difficult situations. In expanding democracy to ensure inclusivity, there is much that we can learn from these efforts and how we can all support immigrant communities and those harmed by discrimination and bias. These LFJ resources can help.