Large School Systems See Plunging Foreign-Language Students

The Trump administration’s focus on immigration enforcement across the country is alleviating the heavy burden of illegals diverting public services, as school systems are reporting significant drops in enrollment after having been overrun with countless migrants, many of who do not speak English.

“One of the victims of Biden’s open border polices was America’s students whose schools became overcrowded[;] teachers, aides and resources, including for disabled students, were diverted to the millions of illegal aliens the Biden Administration flooded into our country,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told The Federalist. “President Trump is putting our children, their education and their future first.

Noting that 2.5 million illegal aliens have already left the United States under the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and deportation operations, McLaughlin said that “America’s public benefits should go to Americans.”

Just as it has done in schools, immigration enforcement has also alleviated the crushing burden that illegal immigration has placed on emergency rooms, as The Federalist reported.

“The actions that have been taken to curb the influx of new illegal migrants and the efforts to remove people who are here illegally will help the American students who were most impacted by the mass wave of illegal immigration under the Biden administration,” Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Media Director Ira Mehlman told The Federalist. “We cannot ask schools and teachers to do the impossible and expect a good outcome.”

Immigration Enforcement and Enrollment Drops

School districts that support mass migration from the Third World come up with a lot of different euphemisms to refer to migrants, like “new-to-country,” “newcomer,” and “new arrivals,” in order to socially psy-op American students and families into believing all Third World illegals are culturally compatible with Americans, or that they do not negatively affect American students.

“The impact that mass illegal immigration has had on vital public institutions like schools is exactly why immigration laws and limits exist not only in this country, but virtually every country on earth. Large-scale immigration affects every aspect of life in the receiving nations,” Mehlman said. “Schools that are suddenly forced to accommodate tens of thousands of indigent migrant kids, who do not speak English and often have no educational background when they arrive will neither serve the educational needs [of] the newcomers, nor the existing student body.”

“Many of the school systems that have been absorbing migrant students were already plagued by poor educational performance,” he added.

Los Angeles

A Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesman told The Federalist that while attendance declined by 1-2 percent at the end of the 2024-2025 school year “in some communities where immigration enforcement activity was reported,” enrollment in other areas “remained steady.”

He also said that this year’s enrollment decreased by about 4 percent compared to last year, which he said is 1.79 percent below enrollment projections.

However, the LAUSD spokesman cautioned that factors for attendance “vary by community, making it difficult to attribute changes to any single cause.” But he implied LAUSD would try to fight immigration enforcement, stating, “Our message is clear: every child belongs in school, and we will do everything in our power to keep our campuses safe, supportive, and welcoming for all.”

On Dec. 11, DHS announced that, since beginning operations in Los Angeles in June, the agency has arrested more than 10,000 illegal aliens there.

Parents in school districts across the country, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, have been trying to get information related to the immigration burden on their schools. Their sense is that some of the decline could be because the left has spread so much fear about immigration enforcement that even children who are legally allowed to be in school are not showing up.

If that is the case, however, then it suggests that the number of those who are illegal who are not attending is far greater. Trump administration’s efforts to correctly interpret the 14th Amendment and end the incessant flood of birth tourists seeking “birthright citizenship” guarantees could be another factor. The U.S. Supreme Court just agreed to take a case ruling on that subject.

LAUSD is not the only district that saw drops in enrollment.

New York City

New York City saw enrollment fall by 2 percent over the past year, its steepest decline since the coronavirus pandemic.

As Chalkbeat put it, “A wave of immigration buoyed dozens of NYC schools. Now, their enrollment is plummeting.” That “wave of historic migration” accounted for tens of thousands of immigrants entering the city’s public schools in 2022.

In New York City, a late 2023 report from the United Federation of Teachers found that more than 300,000 students in the city attended school “in overcrowded classrooms.”

As Mehlman noted, New York schools were forced to “adapt” to accommodate those who speak little or no English, hire social workers to deal with students’ experiences of “traumatic border crossings” allowed under the Biden administration, and deal with food, clothing, and health burdens like immunizations. Many of the parents were “anxiously searching for ways to earn money without work permits,” Chalkbeat stated.

“The base cost per child is more than $36,000 per school year — not including additional costs for ESL instruction, school nutrition programs or other services they might need,” Mehlman said of New York City. “In many cases schools can’t even find qualified educators to teach kids in the dozens of languages they might speak.”

Some school districts boast their foreign-born, non-English-speaking students as a positive thing. One in three residents of Virginia’s largest school district, the D.C. suburb of Fairfax County, is foreign-born, and the county has one of the highest populations of foreigners in the country.

In 2020, 18.7 percent, or more than 35,000 students, were considered to have limited English proficiency. The school district brags about having “students from 204 countries who speak more than 200 different languages at home,” and spent about $95.4 million on accommodating them in 2020.

One New York City school, ATLAS, which used to be called “Newcomers High School,” doubled its enrollment in three years due to migrants, going from 676 students in 2020-2021 to 1,428 students in 2023-2024. The story is the same at other schools, some of which were taking in students from people housed at nearby migrant shelters built to house thousands.

However, many of the same schools that took on the most migrants saw the largest drops in enrollment. The 60 New York City schools that “likely took” the most migrants during Biden’s open border years lost 11 percent of their enrollment in 2025, erasing the gains from the border crisis years.

The fluctuations in enrollment parallel the flow of migrants into shelters in the city, which peaked at about 4,000 per week during the Biden administration and is now at around 100. New student enrollment is down 7 percent from the same time last year, according to the outlet, citing the education department.

The loss of students leads to less federal funding, meaning that fewer federal tax dollars will go to paying for education for foreign-language students, and the funds may now actually be used to benefit New Yorkers instead of non-Americans. However, it remains to be seen how socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani will handle that situation, given his clear commitment to foreigners over New Yorkers.

Chicago

One school district where officials will apparently work tirelessly to benefit migrants over Americans is Chicago Public Schools (CPS). A CPS spokeswoman told The Federalist, “CPS does not collaborate with federal immigration enforcement agencies or representatives, including ICE. Federal agents will not be granted access into CPS schools unless they present a valid criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. CPS does not share student records or information with third parties, including ICE, except in rare cases where a court order or consent from the parent or guardian is obtained.”

She said that some in CPS are concerned about ICE activity, but that the school district will do everything it can to thwart federal operations should they happen in schools, noting, “CPS has been made aware of recent federal law enforcement activity near several schools; however, no incidents occurred inside any CPS buildings.”

CPS staff are trained on “how to respond when federal representatives request access to schools or engage with students or staff,” according to the spokeswoman, but it is unclear what that training involves.

Attendance there has remained “largely consistent” compared to last year, the spokeswoman said, but “the District is aware that there are some student groups that have seen dips in attendance at discrete points this fall,” though CPS did not provide insight into those groups.

CPS allows for illegal alien children to be absent an unlimited amount of times during immigration enforcement operations.

Miami-Dade

Miami-Dade County, Florida, saw a massive drop in new students from other countries enrolling, dropping from around 14,000 in 2024 and about 20,000 in 2023 to just 2,550 in 2025. The plunge occurred in part because so many fewer people are crossing the border.

The decrease in enrollment has lowered the budget by about $70 million, and while school administrators might complain about less money in the school district, Americans should keep in mind that such funding is driven by people who are illegally accessing, overcrowding, and overburdening American public schools in the first place.

However, in Florida, those funding strains coincide with the state making it easier for families to choose alternatives to public schools, allowing students to avoid being trapped by a failing system.

Just like New York, south Florida schools were overcrowded as well, and a 2023 report from the University of Miami stated that the “unparalleled 2.3 million migrants” who crossed the southern border created a situation where a “record-breaking number of migrants place burden on city resources.” The burden included 14,000 migrants flooding Miami-Dade schools, “overwhelming an already strained and overcrowded system.”

Denver

Denver, Colorado, schools only enrolled 400 new migrant students this summer, as opposed to a whopping 1,500 in 2024. That follows an enrollment expansion of about 4,000 from 2023-2024.

“Two things are true: One is that we lost far more students year over year than we expected to lose, and two is that the severity of that decline is largely the result of the net loss of new-to-country students, new arrival students,” said Andrew Huber, Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) executive director of enrollment and campus planning.

In 2024, the school district brought in about 2,400 “late arrivals,” the lion’s share of whom were from Venezuela. DPS needed to allocate $1.6 million across 48 schools in response, and Denver Principal Andria Hinman said, “It has meant scrambling to find furniture for classrooms that have historically only had 20 to 25 students.”

Utah

Utah reported statewide that it has seen its largest decrease in public school enrollment in 25 years, with about 11,500 fewer students in 2025 than in 2024. While state Superintendent Molly Hart attributed the decrease to a variety of causes, including “smaller birth cohorts, slowing in-migration and increased school choice,” it is clear the state has had issues with migrant student overcrowding as well.

Some schools in the state were so strained by non-English-speaking enrollees that the state legislature passed a bill this year making “$500,000 available for schools with a 75% increase in students learning English.”

After 20 years of “welcom[ing] students from across the globe,” the Salt Lake City School District website states, “The district is now a minority majority district, meaning there are now more ethnic minority students than Caucasian students.”

Migrants Divert Billions From Americans

The American taxpayer foots the bill to the tune of about $80 billion annually in education costs for illegals through federal, state, and local taxes, according to a 2023 study from FAIR, with the federal government (largely not being the level of government running education systems) contributing about $6.6 billion, while state and local governments are spending around $73.3 billion.

States with the highest illegal immigrant populations are spending in the billions individually for education costs alone, with California taxpayers forking over $19.5 billion a year as of 2023, Texas spending $10 billion, New York spending $4.65 billion, and Florida spending $4 billion.

“The kids who are harmed by unchecked immigration are the most vulnerable. Wealthier families have the wherewithal to enroll their kids in private schools or relocate to more affluent communities that are not overwhelmed with migrants,” Mehlman told The Federalist. “It is the American kids from poorer families, who already face significant obstacles, that are trapped in failing schools that are burdened with the impossible task of addressing the educational needs of large numbers of migrants. Inevitably, society will pay the price for schools [when] they turn out a generation of kids who are not proficient in math, sciences or literacy.”

American taxpayers, via school districts, are required to fund this insanity because of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, which says the districts must fully accommodate children of illegals as well as lawfully present migrants.

Chicago, for example, rests its hostility to federal enforcement on that case.

As The Federalist reported, Americans expect services like hospitals, schools, and welfare programs to be for Americans, not illegals or “legal” immigrants whom the United States has no obligation to admit, let alone subsidize.

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Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.

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