The first months of President Donald Trump’s second term have witnessed significant shifts in immigration enforcement policy, with profound implications for schools across the United States. The growing sense of stricter enforcement—whether the promised crackdown on unauthorized immigration has been fully implemented or not—has already generated tangible consequences: reduced student attendance, heightened anxiety among children and parents, and tough policy questions for school administrators. In response, school districts nationwide are developing comprehensive strategies to help staff understand this evolving landscape and to preserve educational access for immigrant students.
Building on “safe zone” initiatives developed during the first Trump term, many states and districts rapidly issued new or updated policies in early 2025. This accelerated response reflects several developments: the revocation of the “sensitive locations” policy that previously limited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities in educational settings, increased ICE presence in immigrant communities, and ongoing legal challenges in multiple states questioning the constitutional right to education of children regardless of immigration status, as established in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe.
A review of the state and district documents released so far this year shows education leaders have developed guidance and policies in distinct ways, reflecting the variation in state and local political contexts and in approaches to structuring educational governance. Several states, through their department of education, state board, or attorney general’s office, have released guidance to schools and districts on how to remain in compliance with federal and state law on the education of immigrant-background children and how to develop their own policies and procedures. These cover topics such as how to respond to ICE presence on school campuses and what level of student and parental information can be shared. To contextualize and support the guidance, state and district documents may include a purpose statement aligned with an existing institutional mission, a summary of relevant federal and state legal frameworks, direction for implementing specific protocols at the school level, and supplementary community resources and informational materials for staff and families.
While these documents fulfill the basic function of clarifying legal obligations for educators, many effectively connect these responsibilities to broader educational principles. Regardless of local political context, administrators can unite around policies that promote consistent attendance, minimize classroom disruptions, and encourage family engagement. Some safe zone resolutions leverage these policy frameworks to simultaneously reaffirm institutional commitments to educational access and celebrate community diversity. Others, including in Republican-led states Idaho and Kansas, keep their message directed on following existing law and policies upholding all students’ right to attend school but stop short of advocating for immigrant communities more broadly.
The Legal Basis for Safe Zone Policies
The provisions in existing safe zone policies are based on established law and supported by research on effective school climates. Primary legal support stems from:
Plyler v. Doe. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that free, public education must be made available to all children regardless of immigration status, and schools must not engage in practices that might discourage enrollment or attendance due to how families are classified under immigration law.
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Law enforcement agents are required to have a warrant signed by a judge, not just an administrative warrant issued by their own agency, to investigate or detain a person who is in a location where he or she has an expectation of privacy, including the private areas of a school.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). Information about individual students can only be disclosed to third parties with a legitimate educational purpose or with parent/guardian consent; however, this excludes “directory information,” which may include students’ home addresses.
Civil Rights Act of 1964. A school that fails to prevent bullying and harassment of students based on national origin may violate students’ civil rights.
These legal protections for children from immigrant families align with extensive research on what makes schools truly effective for all students. Schools that actively foster a positive school climate, implement strategies to improve attendance, and create meaningful opportunities for parental engagement consistently demonstrate stronger academic achievement outcomes among their students. Additionally, a 2022 study found safe zone policies to be associated with better academic outcomes for children who had experienced or were at risk of parental deportation, with particular benefits owing to policies limiting ICE access to schools and offering counseling on immigration-related issues.
Guidance Provisions Related to Immigration Enforcement
With the recent retraction of ICE’s sensitive locations memo (which had largely decreed schools, faith-based institutions, and hospitals off-limits to immigration enforcement), educators are eager to understand their legal obligations and what limitations their schools can impose on ICE operations on campus. Safe zone guidance typically describes the legal boundaries within which school systems must operate, while reflecting the community’s broader priorities and ethical framework.
Procedures for ICE encounters. Guidance documents describe what school staff should do if ICE agents (or others conducting immigration enforcement) arrive on campus. Procedures lay out the roles and responsibilities of school personnel, including the chain of command for decision-making and how to notify parents or guardians of ICE activity. Some also provide an example of the difference between an administrative and judicial warrant.
Sensitive information. The same policies for ICE encounters also typically include procedures for responding to in-person or virtual requests for information from ICE or law enforcement and for notifying parents of those requests. Policies may also discuss what information may be made available to school resource officers, who are law enforcement employees stationed in schools.
Additionally, safe zone policies may limit what information schools are permitted to collect and retain. For example, schools must collect information from newly enrolled students about their place of birth and school history to identify recent immigrant children for federal funding purposes, but they may choose to retain only the identifier used to count such children in school data systems and not the underlying data collected to identify them as recent immigrants.
Some safe zone policies direct schools and districts to review FERPA procedures, such as annual privacy notifications. As part of this, schools can update how they define directory information to protect sensitive data, such as a student’s address and place of birth. Schools might additionally be requested to review what opportunities they offer parents to opt out of the release of directory data and place limits on to whom this information may be released.
Guidance Provisions Related to Communication and Engagement
State and local guidance generally includes suggestions on clearly communicating policies related to children from immigrant families to both parents/guardians and school staff.
Parent communication. Given the swiftly changing policy landscape and the high stakes, guidance often directs schools to update parent and backup caretaker contact information to be used if one or both parents are detained. Going further, California’s guidance reflects rules in its education code that direct schools to exhaust parental instructions regarding emergency care before calling Child Protective Services.
Family resources. Guidance often directs school staff to provide information to families at risk of detention or deportation. For example, some safe zone policies include directives to provide “know your rights” presentations to parents or referrals to legal assistance. They may also suggest ways school staff can help families gather essential documents, including by providing a checklist of important papers such as visas and birth certificates, or how to quickly prepare school records for children leaving the country.
Staff professional development. Safe zone policies may describe how school staff and others sharing the space (such as health practitioners who work in schools) will be advised of new procedures. Policies may also suggest additional topics for professional development that align with community needs and concerns, such as background on the U.S. immigration system and immigrant communities, legal obligations related to serving English Learners, how to create a welcoming environment, disrupting bullying and harassment, and trauma-informed care.
Guidance Provisions Related to Enrollment
Finally, some school systems broaden the scope of their guidance on immigrant students to include provisions related to school enrollment. This is particularly timely as several states, including Tennessee and Texas, have introduced measures that challenge Plyler either directly or by directing schools to report on the costs of educating unauthorized immigrant students.
Enrollment. Policies may remind staff that enrollment procedures and forms are not allowed to inquire as to families’ immigration status or require families to provide information or documents that might expose their status, such as social security numbers or birth certificates. As a result, many schools provide a list of alternative documents families can use to prove where they live and how old their children are.
Families experiencing homelessness. Immigrant families arriving in a new community may experience unstable housing. Because of the particular relevance for unauthorized families, safe zone guidance and policies may remind staff members responsible for enrollment about the protections offered by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. These include the right to enroll children in school even if they lack the documents usually needed for registration and the right to maintain enrollment in the first school they attended if they move within the district.
From Policy to Practice
Safe zone policies operate within evolving legal frameworks—including potential challenges to Plyler v. Doe—and must adapt to factors in their local contexts, such as community demographics and regional attitudes toward immigration. And yet, these documents are grounded in the fundamental educational principle, recognized in Plyler, that access to education serves both individual children and broader societal interests by fostering economic self-sufficiency and community integration.
While policy adoption is an important first step, a policy’s impact hinges on how it is implemented. In this case, implementation depends on whether school systems commit adequate resources and provide training to ensure such policies are widely understood and consistently followed. When backed by such support, safe zone policies can help create better learning environments for all of a school’s students.
Schools and Immigrant Students Navigate an Era of Rising Immigration Enforcement
The first months of President Donald Trump’s second term have witnessed significant shifts in immigration enforcement policy, with profound implications for schools across the United States. The growing sense of stricter enforcement—whether the promised crackdown on unauthorized immigration has been fully implemented or not—has already generated tangible consequences: reduced student attendance, heightened anxiety among children and parents, and tough policy questions for school administrators. In response, school districts nationwide are developing comprehensive strategies to help staff understand this evolving landscape and to preserve educational access for immigrant students.
Building on “safe zone” initiatives developed during the first Trump term, many states and districts rapidly issued new or updated policies in early 2025. This accelerated response reflects several developments: the revocation of the “sensitive locations” policy that previously limited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities in educational settings, increased ICE presence in immigrant communities, and ongoing legal challenges in multiple states questioning the constitutional right to education of children regardless of immigration status, as established in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe.
A review of the state and district documents released so far this year shows education leaders have developed guidance and policies in distinct ways, reflecting the variation in state and local political contexts and in approaches to structuring educational governance. Several states, through their department of education, state board, or attorney general’s office, have released guidance to schools and districts on how to remain in compliance with federal and state law on the education of immigrant-background children and how to develop their own policies and procedures. These cover topics such as how to respond to ICE presence on school campuses and what level of student and parental information can be shared. To contextualize and support the guidance, state and district documents may include a purpose statement aligned with an existing institutional mission, a summary of relevant federal and state legal frameworks, direction for implementing specific protocols at the school level, and supplementary community resources and informational materials for staff and families.
While these documents fulfill the basic function of clarifying legal obligations for educators, many effectively connect these responsibilities to broader educational principles. Regardless of local political context, administrators can unite around policies that promote consistent attendance, minimize classroom disruptions, and encourage family engagement. Some safe zone resolutions leverage these policy frameworks to simultaneously reaffirm institutional commitments to educational access and celebrate community diversity. Others, including in Republican-led states Idaho and Kansas, keep their message directed on following existing law and policies upholding all students’ right to attend school but stop short of advocating for immigrant communities more broadly.
The Legal Basis for Safe Zone Policies
The provisions in existing safe zone policies are based on established law and supported by research on effective school climates. Primary legal support stems from:
These legal protections for children from immigrant families align with extensive research on what makes schools truly effective for all students. Schools that actively foster a positive school climate, implement strategies to improve attendance, and create meaningful opportunities for parental engagement consistently demonstrate stronger academic achievement outcomes among their students. Additionally, a 2022 study found safe zone policies to be associated with better academic outcomes for children who had experienced or were at risk of parental deportation, with particular benefits owing to policies limiting ICE access to schools and offering counseling on immigration-related issues.
Guidance Provisions Related to Immigration Enforcement
With the recent retraction of ICE’s sensitive locations memo (which had largely decreed schools, faith-based institutions, and hospitals off-limits to immigration enforcement), educators are eager to understand their legal obligations and what limitations their schools can impose on ICE operations on campus. Safe zone guidance typically describes the legal boundaries within which school systems must operate, while reflecting the community’s broader priorities and ethical framework.
Procedures for ICE encounters. Guidance documents describe what school staff should do if ICE agents (or others conducting immigration enforcement) arrive on campus. Procedures lay out the roles and responsibilities of school personnel, including the chain of command for decision-making and how to notify parents or guardians of ICE activity. Some also provide an example of the difference between an administrative and judicial warrant.
Sensitive information. The same policies for ICE encounters also typically include procedures for responding to in-person or virtual requests for information from ICE or law enforcement and for notifying parents of those requests. Policies may also discuss what information may be made available to school resource officers, who are law enforcement employees stationed in schools.
Additionally, safe zone policies may limit what information schools are permitted to collect and retain. For example, schools must collect information from newly enrolled students about their place of birth and school history to identify recent immigrant children for federal funding purposes, but they may choose to retain only the identifier used to count such children in school data systems and not the underlying data collected to identify them as recent immigrants.
Some safe zone policies direct schools and districts to review FERPA procedures, such as annual privacy notifications. As part of this, schools can update how they define directory information to protect sensitive data, such as a student’s address and place of birth. Schools might additionally be requested to review what opportunities they offer parents to opt out of the release of directory data and place limits on to whom this information may be released.
Guidance Provisions Related to Communication and Engagement
State and local guidance generally includes suggestions on clearly communicating policies related to children from immigrant families to both parents/guardians and school staff.
Parent communication. Given the swiftly changing policy landscape and the high stakes, guidance often directs schools to update parent and backup caretaker contact information to be used if one or both parents are detained. Going further, California’s guidance reflects rules in its education code that direct schools to exhaust parental instructions regarding emergency care before calling Child Protective Services.
Family resources. Guidance often directs school staff to provide information to families at risk of detention or deportation. For example, some safe zone policies include directives to provide “know your rights” presentations to parents or referrals to legal assistance. They may also suggest ways school staff can help families gather essential documents, including by providing a checklist of important papers such as visas and birth certificates, or how to quickly prepare school records for children leaving the country.
Staff professional development. Safe zone policies may describe how school staff and others sharing the space (such as health practitioners who work in schools) will be advised of new procedures. Policies may also suggest additional topics for professional development that align with community needs and concerns, such as background on the U.S. immigration system and immigrant communities, legal obligations related to serving English Learners, how to create a welcoming environment, disrupting bullying and harassment, and trauma-informed care.
Guidance Provisions Related to Enrollment
Finally, some school systems broaden the scope of their guidance on immigrant students to include provisions related to school enrollment. This is particularly timely as several states, including Tennessee and Texas, have introduced measures that challenge Plyler either directly or by directing schools to report on the costs of educating unauthorized immigrant students.
Enrollment. Policies may remind staff that enrollment procedures and forms are not allowed to inquire as to families’ immigration status or require families to provide information or documents that might expose their status, such as social security numbers or birth certificates. As a result, many schools provide a list of alternative documents families can use to prove where they live and how old their children are.
Families experiencing homelessness. Immigrant families arriving in a new community may experience unstable housing. Because of the particular relevance for unauthorized families, safe zone guidance and policies may remind staff members responsible for enrollment about the protections offered by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. These include the right to enroll children in school even if they lack the documents usually needed for registration and the right to maintain enrollment in the first school they attended if they move within the district.
From Policy to Practice
Safe zone policies operate within evolving legal frameworks—including potential challenges to Plyler v. Doe—and must adapt to factors in their local contexts, such as community demographics and regional attitudes toward immigration. And yet, these documents are grounded in the fundamental educational principle, recognized in Plyler, that access to education serves both individual children and broader societal interests by fostering economic self-sufficiency and community integration.
While policy adoption is an important first step, a policy’s impact hinges on how it is implemented. In this case, implementation depends on whether school systems commit adequate resources and provide training to ensure such policies are widely understood and consistently followed. When backed by such support, safe zone policies can help create better learning environments for all of a school’s students.
NCIIP's K-12 education work