Dive Brief:

• The California Equity Leadership Alliance announced the creation of a toolkit to help support educators looking to assist undocumented students and their families, releasing the guide 35 years after a U.S. Supreme Court decision found that education was a civil right for all students regardless of their immigration status.
• The online toolkit provides a number of resources and links for students and families, as well as for educators, administrators and policymakers, and the Alliance argued that educational advocacy had been unnecessarily "siloed" from the advocacy for immigrants’ rights for too long.
• The resources included in the toolkit consist of strategies and guides for classroom management, fact sheets and statistics, as well as resources for legal issues and for offering and finding social and emotional support for undocumented students and their families.

Dive Insight:

The recent news that the Trump administration will not pursue the undocumented individuals covered by President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order can help immigrant students breathe slightly easier, as the threat of immediate deportation seems to have been temporarily lifted. The order applies to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. However, many undocumented students are wary of accessing financial assistance that may help them pay for college, concerned that offering information to federal agencies about loans may make it easier to find them. They also may be unwilling to seek mental health support, other types of healthcare or educational counseling for fear of deportation or capture.

Additionally, President Donald Trump’s recent decision about DACA was accompanied by an announcement that Trump would rescind the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans order, which would have extended DACA protections to parents of children who are citizens or lawful permanent residents. If deportations do increase, the anxiety for DACA students could increase as well, even if they are not directly endangered. The worry that could accompany not knowing when the DACA protections might change could increase the need for social/emotional support for students. Administrators should strive to ensure that mental health counseling is available in schools for such students, as they may feel that it is safer to access such assistance if it’s located within the school.