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Daily student absences rose 22% among more than 100,000 children living in California’s rural Central Valley in the weeks following January 2025 immigration raids, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study.

The findings span the early weeks of the second Trump administration. Since that time, immigration enforcement has escalated dramatically, particularly in Democratic cities targeted by the president, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

Schools became fair game days into the new administration when it revoked longstanding protections against enforcement actions near or on-site. Hospitals and churches, too, are no longer exempt from raids.

Earlier this month, a day care teacher in Chicago was dragged out of her preschool by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in front of students and their families. A federal judge ruled her detention was illegal and she has since been released.

The incident, caught on camera and made public, has drawn widespread condemnation.

“Schools should be safe environments for children to learn, for their brains to develop and for them to form secure attachments,” said Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at ZERO TO THREE, an early childhood advocacy group.

Boteach noted, too, 20% of the early educator workforce are immigrants and while a vast majority have legal status, their families and communities might not.

“If they are fearful and anxious, they are bringing that fear and anxiety with them,” she said. “And now you don’t know when enforcement will strike and that can be incredibly traumatic even if the child is a U.S. citizen.”

Many high school students, including several in New York City, have already been held or deported.

The 113,000 children in the Stanford study — they attended Bakersfield City Elementary, Fresno Unified, Kerman Unified, Southern Kern Unified and Tehachapi Unified school districts — lost more than 81,000 days of instruction in the two months following the January raids, which lasted three days and targeted agriculture workers.

None of the Central Valley schools returned calls or emails last week requesting comment.

Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, examined daily attendance data, which helped him pinpoint a falloff he attributes to harsh immigration tactics.

“That really allowed me to identify how things changed when the raids began,” he said. “Something very distinctive occurred.”

Dee examined data from August through May in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years and from August 2024 through February of this year. He said he was surprised by the magnitude of the impact the raids had on attendance.

Forceful immigration tactics, pandemic-related learning loss and mental health issues combine to exhaust students and families to the point that kids stay home from school, he said.

“I see this increase in absences as an indicator of ways in which we are exacerbating all of those problems,” Dee said. “Aggressive interior immigration enforcement drives families with school-age children away.”

Protesters gather at First Ward Park for the ‘No Border Patrol In Charlotte’ rally on Nov. 15. (Getty Images)

Just this week, student absences more than tripled in Charlotte, North Carolina, two days after federal immigration agents swept into the city, arresting 130 people. The Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District reported 30,399 students absent Monday.

Adam Strom, co-founder and executive director of Re-Imagining Migration, said the relationship between schools and families is based on good faith. Immigration enforcement, a powerful disruptor, can be catastrophic.

“Schools ask immigrant families for profound trust — trust with their children, their personal information, their futures,” Strom said. “When ICE raids their communities, families respond by withdrawing from public institutions out of caution — a protective instinct that’s entirely rational. The attendance data tells us exactly what happens when institutions meant to build belonging become sources of fear instead.”

And, he said, that anxiety extends well beyond families with undocumented members.

“When people with legal status, and even citizens, are being detained based on how they look and speak, every immigrant family regardless of documentation worries about whether their children will be safe on the way to and from school,” he said.

Immigration agents have swept up nearly 200 American citizens, including children, holding some detainees for days. Dee said aggressive immigration tactics not only hurt kids, but schools themselves as they are funded based on attendance.

As to why absenteeism holds steady even weeks after a raid, he said the impact of such enforcement actions linger. Some families become shut-ins. Others might move away in search of safety.

He said, too, the 81,000 missed days of instruction shoots up to 725,000 when applied to the entire four-county region.

Some 800,000 migrant and seasonal workers fuel California’s agricultural industry. Reports show roughly half have citizenship or other work authorization. California is home to nearly 3 million undocumented residents: Roughly 112,000 between the ages of 5 and 18 are enrolled in the state’s schools.

Dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” the Central Valley raids, conducted by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, began January 7, 2025, during the tail end of the Biden era — and the day after the 2024 presidential election was certified by Congress.

Three former Biden aides said the man who led the effort, Gregory Bovino, “went rogue” and conducted the Central Valley action — hundreds of miles from the U.S. border — without the permission of higher-ups. While border patrol officials said they were targeting only criminals, subsequent investigations found that they did not have any information as to the criminal background of 77 of the 78 people arrested during the sweep.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol officials in February for these enforcement actions, which it deemed a “fishing expedition.” Bovino has since led other controversial immigration operations, including those in Chicago and the one just launched in Charlotte. Reports this week say New Orleans may be the next enforcement target.

Dee said kids in early grades were more likely to miss school than their older peers because those living with undocumented immigrants tend to be younger and families with small children might be more fearful of deportation.

Kathy Mulrooney, director of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Strategy Program at ZERO TO THREE, said young children also suffer a particular cognitive trauma when the adults around them are detained.

“Even if babies don’t have the words for what’s happening, their bodies feel the fear,” she said.

When a parent is suddenly taken, Mulrooney said, or when a community is shaken by aggressive immigration tactics, students are left with little ability to feel the type of safety and curiosity they need to learn.

“Simply put, when a child’s brain is in survival mode, learning takes a back seat,” she said.

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