Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Numerous studies have shown how local immigration enforcement adversely impacts immigrant children’s education outcomes (Amuedo-Dorantes & Lopez 2015, Dee & Murphy 2018, Amuedo‐Dorantes & Arenas-Arroyo 2019). However, these studies focus on outcomes for Hispanic children only, even though an estimated 20.3 percent of likely undocumented immigrants are not Hispanic (Pew Research 2018). The present study examines the effects of these policies on all English-Language Learners (ELLs), not just Hispanics.

This study explores whether intensified local immigration enforcement increases the chronic absenteeism rate for ELLs using Ordinary Least Squares regression and controlling for important socioeconomic factors. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), one of the nations’ preeminent immigrant advocacy organizations, created a seven-point rubric that tallies the number of immigration enforcement policies enacted by each city or county in the US. These policies include a 287(g) agreement, which permits local police to act as immigration enforcers and ICE holds, which allow jails to detain a person after they should be released so that ICE can take them in custody (ILRC 2016). School-level data on chronic absenteeism by ELL-status were obtained from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection for the 2015-2016 school year, as well as school-level data on poverty, race, and school climate. Covariate county-level data for socioeconomic factors and English-speaking ability were gleaned from the 2010-2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.

Chronic absenteeism is associated with reduced math and reading achievement outcomes, educational engagement, and social engagement (Gottfried 2010, Gottfried 2014, Goodman 2014). In general, migration stressors increase risk of depressive symptoms and anxiety for first-generation immigrant Latino youth (Potochnick and Perreira 2010). Even children who are citizens or legal immigrants face secondary trauma from enforcement when they have family members who are undocumented (Rabin 2018, Amuedo‐Dorantes & Arenas-Arroyo 2019). However, chronic absenteeism is a result of many other factors besides just immigration enforcement.

Interestingly, ELLs are 20 percent less likely to be chronically absent than their peers (Department of Education 2016), so the possibility of increasing absenteeism as a result of immigration enforcement would be alarming. Furthermore, at least 36 states have elected to measure chronic absenteeism as one of their School Quality and Student Success indicators under the Every Student Succeeds Act (Jordan & Miller 2017). Schools and districts that perform poorly on their accountability indicators will be targeted for interventions by the state, including being shut down. Thus, the findings from this study will be valuable to schools, school districts, counties, and states who have a student body that is 9.5 percent ELL. This study also has ramifications for family and immigration policy, specifically for counties who decide to partner with ICE for federal immigration enforcement.