Dr. Laura Bellows discusses the impact of ICE’s 287g programs on students in North Carolina.
The enforcement of immigration laws can be disruptive to the families and communities of those subject to raids, arrests, detentions, and deportations. And the spillover effects of this enforcement touch many of the nation’s students — an estimated 5.2 million children living in the United States have at least one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant. The unique instability experienced by these children, many of whom are U.S. citizens, can hinder their performance in school and negatively impact their educational outcomes.
Absences are a short-term measure of school engagement that can lead to long-term consequences. “We know that absences are associated with lower achievement in a causal way,” social policy scholar Dr. Laura Bellows recently explained in a webinar with the SDP network, which is why she chose absences as a proxy for the impact these laws have on student well-being in her paper published in AERA Open.
Bellows first became aware of and interested in the relationship between immigration enforcement and student academic outcomes as a 4th-grade teacher in Houston. “Many of my students were the children of immigrants, and in some cases immigrants themselves,” Bellows reflected. “I remember their concerns about increasing enforcement in the Houston area, which was happening more through partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement.”
And when immigration arrests increase, affected students are indeed absent more. Bellows’ paper links immigration enforcement to negative impacts on student attendance, including increases in chronic absenteeism, following the implementation of 287g programs in North Carolina.
Extending immigration enforcement into communities
“When people think about immigration enforcement, they mostly picture ICE raids,” Bellows explained. “And while those raids are salient and have a large impact, they actually make up a smaller proportion of immigration-related arrests in the U.S. interior.” This is, in part, due to partnerships between the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and local law enforcement, such as those facilitated by the 287g program which extends the reach of immigration enforcement into local communities.
This program designation was first authorized in 1996, and by 2005-6, local partnerships with sheriffs' offices and city police departments permeated the country. And according to Johanna Derby’s Burden of Deportation Pyramid, immigration enforcement has disproportionately affected Hispanic immigrants as compared to other immigrant populations.
To explore whether 287g programs impacted students of immigrant families, many of whom are American citizens, Bellows looked to North Carolina. North Carolina carried data on immigration and customs enforcement, student demographic data (race/ethnicity, county, and classification as “limited English proficient”), and outcomes data (yearly absence counts, end of grade math and reading test scores in grades 3-8, end of course test scores in Algebra 1 and English one for grade 9), and Bellows compared students from counties that applied and were approved for 287g programs to counties that applied and were not approved from school year 2003-4 to 2012-13.
She found that Hispanic students classified as “limited English proficient”—a proxy for students from immigrant families—were reported increasingly absent after the activation of 287g programs in their community. This effect was not seen in their white or Black counterparts. “What’s more, these Hispanic students were not more likely to miss a few days of school, but 15, 20, or even 50 or more days of school,” reported Bellows. “Thus, these students were more likely to be chronically absent.”
Immigration enforcement affects student attendance for a number of reasons. Several studies link immigration enforcement with
- declines in engagement with public institutions, including public schools;
- increased fear of driving that prevents students from getting to school;
- decreases in employment, requiring some youth to supplement household income;
- poorer mental and physical health and reductions in healthcare coverage; and
- increases in bullying.
Holding ICE and Policy Makers Accountable
With a push in recent years to hold schools more accountable for student attendance and to add chronic absenteeism as an indicator of school performance and health, Bellows’ research adds a policy dimension to the conversation.
“Schools are not the only public institutions responsible for student outcomes,” Bellows asserted. “ICE and other public agencies ought to be held accountable for student outcomes as well, and effects on students should be included in cost/benefit analyses of immigration enforcement.”
Additionally, Bellows called for improvement of pathways to citizenship and cited how programs like Consideration for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) improves mental health for children.
For the full video of Dr. Bellows’ presentation, click here.
Dr. Laura Bellows is a social policy scholar and IES Postdoctoral Fellow with the School of Education & Human Development at the University of Virginia.