Panicked calls from parents. More empty desks in classrooms. Higher anxiety.
Those are some of the effects school officials from around the country say their communities have been experiencing in the weeks since the Trump administration rolled back a federal policy that restricted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement from conducting raids on school grounds.
No ICE arrests at schools have been reported, yet, but the fear caused by raids doesn’t show any signs of letting up as the president looks for new ways to deliver on his campaign promise of mass deportations. A judge denied an attempt to ban ICE from entering K-12 campuses in Denver Public Schools, where the superintendent says fear of deportation arrests has driven up the rate of absences.
Research is clear on the impact of stress on students’ ability to learn, which became particularly salient after the onset of the pandemic.
As immigration arrests increase across the country, the psychological strain on immigrant children — or whose family members are immigrants — is likely to continue, too. In Los Angeles, a man was reportedly arrested by immigration officers in front of his children. A 9-year-old Denver student has been ordered to appear before an immigration judge following her mother’s arrest by ICE at their home.
EdSurge spoke with Germán A. Cadenas, associate director of the Center for Youth Social Emotional Wellness at Rutgers University in New Jersey, about the ways that the stress caused by the current political climate can manifest in children and affect their learning.
Cardenas, also an associate professor of clinical psychology, discussed how teachers and administrators can help students feel safe at school.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
EdSurge: We’ve seen a lot of news about how raids on immigrant communities are causing anxiety, including among children. How is the stress affecting them?
Germán A. Cadenas: We know from decades of research that stress, especially when children don’t feel safe, is not helpful to their development or their learning. It’s an impediment to young people’s learning and development. That’s for all children and that includes immigrants.
There’s a good amount of research from that enforcement in Arizona back [in 2010], in the SB 1070 days, that showed that there’s actually a spillover effect. That means that although these anti-immigrant policies are targeting undocumented immigrants, they also harm people across different statuses and U.S. citizens.
Students are in the classroom with other students who have different kinds of statuses. When there’s fear in the classroom, when somebody is feeling anxious about their family, that impacts their friends, it impacts the classmates that they’re sitting in the classroom with. It impacts the teachers.
It’s just very detrimental for learning and for mental health for children to have this fear and this anxiety. I think it’s very concerning that ICE is being empowered to enter educational spaces now and disrupt these places that we used to think of as safe places for children. Children are not criminals, children are just children.
You were part of an American Psychological Association task force that visited immigrant shelters on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border last year. What did you observe about the mental health of the children who were waiting to cross or had just arrived in the U.S.?
The reason why immigrants are arriving in the U.S. at the border at points of entry is the same reason that we’ve always had immigration, and it’s because people are seeking a better life, they’re seeking better conditions — and that’s what I saw at the border.
I just saw people who were very desperate and who were fleeing difficult conditions and who wanted an opportunity to work and contribute and keep their families safe. There were many, many children, many families, many women who were pregnant or who had small children, and it was really moving to see how the families were trying to keep a sense of normalcy for their children, even at the immigration camps where they were sleeping in tents and on the floor, but you could still see children running around and playing and families treating them with a lot of affection.
I think it really speaks to the resilience of immigrants and immigrant families and just how strong those bonds are. And I do think that is a protective factor, even within this uncertainty, that immigrant families are just trying to keep each other safe right now.
In the report that came from that border visit, you and your colleagues explain the science behind how stress affects mental health and give recommendations on how educators can support their immigrant students. Could you go over how stress might manifest right now in immigrant children and their ability to learn?
What we know from human development research and educational sciences is that it is very important for children to feel safe in the classroom in order to learn, to feel like they belong, to feel that they’re in a stable environment 一 family stability, stability in their educational institutions, in their neighborhoods, in their communities.
That structure stability is very important for children’s development because it allows them to feel safe and to relax. When they do, then the learning center of the brain becomes active, and then children are able to engage with learning in a meaningful way..
For children to hold fear and stress, it is just not good for their development. We know it can cause behavioral issues, right? Children are learning to manage their emotions and cope, and sometimes without having the support of folks who are trained, it can be really hard for children to make sense of what’s going on.
We also know that for them to feel like things are not stable, and that there’s a sense of uncertainty about whether their caretakers will be taken, that is a very terrifying place to be for children.
A lot of your research is on how educational institutions can support immigrant youth and families. What are some of those strategies?
I believe that trying to protect that safety in the environment as much as possible. Especially with programs that are specialized to help children [and] families feel a sense of belonging in the schools, it’s really important to have culturally responsive mental health providers within the schools, folks who are trained to work with emotional concerns that might arise from this anti-immigrant context.
Also to provide a space for children and families to learn about their legal rights and to understand what is happening with this context, and to get a sense of feeling empowered on that. I think those things are very helpful.
You previously mentioned Arizona’s SB 1070, which was the 2010 “show me your papers” law that caused fear of racial profiling against Latinos by police. Obviously there are immediate effects of the stress caused by policies like that, but do children end up feeling effects over the long term? Can it affect their learning in the future?
I think it depends, but yes, there’s certainly the risk that this climate and this type of aggressive enforcement could have a long-term effect. I think it really depends on the person and the family and the circumstances, but I think there’s been research that shows that family separations in particular, like losing a family member who’s deported, it’s just deeply, deeply painful and difficult.
There is a report that we put together with a nonprofit organization named ImmSchools, and they are a close partner of mine. We’ve been doing a lot of work together over the past few years on documenting how we can help schools become safer for undocumented students and families.
ImmSchools provides programs within the schools that help family members and young people learn about their legal rights. We found that at the end of the programs, young people displayed a high level of psychological wellbeing compared to students that had not received the program.
So I would say that right now it is very important, especially for educators, for folks who work in K-12 systems, to be very explicit about how welcoming they are towards immigrants.
Psychological wellbeing was also linked to children’s sense of agency to ask for support when they need it. It was also linked to the school culture. So again, there’s so much that schools can do to be safe for undocumented young people and immigrant young people across [legal] statuses.
Psychological wellbeing was also linked to positive academic engagement. So going back to your question about how stress can manifest, sometimes feeling stressed gets in the way of children’s performance at school, and their academic outcomes can be impacted.
But we’re seeing that welcoming behaviors towards immigrants and school culture are linked to mental health, greater psychological wellbeing, and those things are also linked to greater positive engagement in academics.
So you need to be explicit and say, “You’re welcome here. We want you here.”
I think it is helpful to be explicit and to show it through your behaviors, and there are many ways that educators can do that.
For instance, celebrating different cultures where the children may come from, celebrating cultural diversity within the classroom, celebrating the stories of immigrants, integrating them into the curriculum, celebrating music and centering the stories of immigrants who are here in the U.S., and creating an atmosphere that is welcoming.
Do you think teachers and schools can do that right now with threats to funding over diversity, equity and inclusion?
It’s a really difficult environment, unfortunately, for educators and schools. I know that there are many barriers being put in place for schools to be able to support all students in the way that they deserve to be supported, and I wish I had more answers.
In many ways, this is unprecedented that the diversity initiatives at schools are being limited and being restricted. I think it’s important for schools to understand their district policies regarding diversity, and also to understand their local laws and policies and to make decisions about these with their administrators, to find a way to support students in a way that they feel best aligned with all the different changes.
I think that there’s still a lot of room for educators to do right by all of their students, including immigrant students.
Could you share some examples of how educators can do that?
I’ve done some research with young undocumented college students where I’ve shown that experiences of everyday discrimination are linked to more anxiety and more depression for them, and there’s similar research with young immigrants that other scholars have done.
One thing that teachers can do is to create an environment where discrimination is not tolerated in the classroom, where bullying is not tolerated, and where everyday discrimination and bullying are addressed appropriately within the classroom or with more support from mental health providers or administrators. A couple of weeks ago, we saw the very sad, tragic news that a young girl in Texas committed suicide because she was being bullied about her parents’ immigration status.
So for teachers to intervene, for educators to intervene, to provide mental health support, to address it with the families, and to really be a shield for children who are experiencing discrimination within the schools, I think is one way of creating that sense of belonging and that safety.
Another strategy that I’ll throw out there: We are living in an environment of a lot of misinformation and disinformation about immigration. A strategy that educators can use is to reflect about their own biases and their own beliefs, their own attitudes about immigrants, and to challenge them and to try to access factual information about immigration, to follow reputable sources related to immigration, [to assess] where they get their news and where they get their information about immigrants.
