By Howard Blume and Kate Payne

Nov. 29, 2025 5 AM PT

Last school year, this Roybal Learning Center junior was doing well and making excellent grades. This year, as a senior, she’s almost dropped out several times and has talked of leaving the U.S. and reuniting with her mother, who was deported over the summer to Guatemala.

So far, the girl has remained in school, says teacher Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona. But many students in similar situations have not.

Across the nation, immigration raids and border restrictions have led to a drop in K-12 enrollment that appears to number in at least the tens of thousands, affecting Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami and elsewhere, based on figures provided by school district officials. The drop also reflects the lack of non-U.S.-born students, or “newcomers,” entering the nation’s public school systems.

For students who had already been attending U.S. schools, the decline is an indicator of disrupted learning — and, in some school districts, financial shortfalls.

“These declines reflect a climate of fear and instability created by ongoing immigration crackdowns, which disrupt family stability, housing and mobility,” said L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho. “When families are afraid to be seen, or when they cannot afford to remain in their communities, they are less likely to enroll, reenroll, or stay in public schools.”

At Roybal, just west of downtown L.A., there are at least 200 fewer students than anticipated, said Cardona, who teaches ethnic studies and serves as coordinator for a film and television magnet program. Before this year, she said, programs at the school had a waiting list.

California: ‘Can I just be a kid?’ Students shaken by immigration raids seek help from school counselors, Oct. 5, 2025

“We’re not too sure if some students are sheltering in place, if they’re working, or if they got deported or self-deported,” Cardona said. “We’ve done our best to help them with resources but with a lot of the kiddos, we just don’t know what happened to them.”

Neither the U.S. Department of Education nor the Department of Homeland Security — which are charged with enforcing Trump administration education and immigration policy — responded immediately to a request for comment.

How Los Angeles Unified is affected

In the L.A. Unified School District, enrollment overall is down just over 4% compared with last year. This it is about 2% more than a projection based on factors other than immigration enforcement.

Carvalho said fears in immigrant communities “are now exacerbating preexisting factors that were already driving statewide enrollment declines — including falling birth rates, rising housing costs and broader economic pressures.”

In a school system with nearly 400,000 students, the difference this year between the anticipated decline and the actual decline is more than 7,000 students.

An indicator that speaks to the effect of immigration enforcement is the number of “newcomer” students.

Newcomers are defined as non-U.S.-born students enrolled for three or fewer years in any U.S. school. This is an educational category, not an indication of whether a student resides legally in the country. California schools do not collect information about legal status — and a 1982 Supreme Court decision protects the right of immigrant children to receive a public education.

California: An L.A. high school senior was walking his dog. Then immigration agents grabbed him, Aug. 15, 2025

In 2023-24, L.A. Unified had 21,997 newcomers by the end of the school year, accounting for 5.2% of students. The end-of-year total for last year was 19,110 students — 4.7% of total enrollment and a decrease of 2,887 from the previous year.

At that point, President Trump had been in office for about six months — with a surge in immigration raids in Los Angeles spiking in June.

The enrollment trend continued this fall, with recent data showing an additional decline of 1,768 newcomers, bringing their enrollment to 17,342 and reducing newcomers to 4.4% of total enrollment.

https://archive.ph/p6m2Q

Denying children an education is MAGA, Trumpkins?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5805912&forum_id=2#49481592)

Alberto (if that's his real name) must go back.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5805912&forum_id=2#49481621)