Keeping immigrant youth safe at school

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OPINION – It unfortunately isn’t news anymore: our immigrant communities are facing unprecedented attacks.

In addition to throwing legal status of immigrants into question, these new enforcement measures cause workers to miss shifts, harm mental health of impacted communities, degrade trust with local law enforcement, and lower school attendance – which directly affects the finances of our already under-resourced schools.

The State of California has long been a leader in defending our immigrant neighbors. Among a robust network of publicly-supported legal services programs, the state currently provides funding to provide legal assistance at all California State University and California Community College campuses funded in part with education funding set aside from the general fund due to Proposition 98.

Our organizations – CARECEN and Immigrant Legal Defense – helped start this program in partnership with the state, and have served tens of thousands of families on college campuses to date. These services do more than help the students themselves – presence of legal services on campuses help the student’s entire family, increasing the likelihood that immigrant youth access educational opportunities and that their families access critical services they need.

Building on the success of the higher education model, our organizations have worked hard to find creative ways to stand up legal services systems on TK-12 campuses. At Oakland Unified, school staff worked to create a case management system that could directly refer students facing active deportation hearings to our legal teams, who leveraged minimal public dollars with private donations to build capacity to represent those students in court.

Oakland Unified staff report that the students who access legal services through this program were much more likely to consistently attend school – which is critical for their success, as well as funding for the district.

At a webinar we hosted recently for legislative staff, we shared the story of “Yesi” – an Indigenous student who fled from Guatemala by herself after being sexually assaulted. Despite a difficult living situation, Yesi was an amazing student – but her schoolwork started to suffer as her immigrant hearing date grew near.

Yesi was one of the first students to participate in the first legal clinic hosted by Immigrant Legal Defense at Oakland Unified School District.Thanks to strong legal representation, Yesi was granted asylum status and eventually became a citizen. She has graduated from college, and even used her experience to advocate for funding from the City of Oakland to keep the school program running.

Stories like Yesi’s are far from unique, and all are just as powerful. We manage to do all of this with very minimal public funding, but we can’t sustain our services – or meet the level of need – without more support. We are constantly being barraged by calls from schools who have the will to help and a huge need among their students – but no resources to get a program off the ground.

As the State continues to grapple with the impact this crisis is having across our communities, we are working with other education advocates to urge the Legislature to authorize TK-12 funding from Proposition 98 to be used for legal services for immigrants. This will help address average daily attendance and provide an important compliment to other services aimed at addressing the needs of our immigrant neighbors.

Expanding the model we’ve tested in Oakland to other communities will build on our success and will support our students and our schools at an urgent time. This will improve student outcomes, stabilize daily attendance, and make the entire community safer.

We are serving at the frontlines of this crisis. The need is great. Now is the time for California to keep pushing forward to ensure our schools are safe and accessible to everyone.

Julie Mitchell is the Managing Attorney at CARECEN-LA. Eleni Wolfe-Roubatis is Co-Executive Director of Immigrant Legal Defense in Oakland. 

Capitol Weekly welcomes Opinions on California public policy or politics. Click here for more information about submitting an Op-Ed