According to a report referenced in Campus Safety Magazine, almost five million U.S. kids live with at least one illegal alien parent in their household. This information comes from a July 2024 Pew Research Center report.

The statistic was used in a recent Campus Safety Magazine article to point out that about 70% of high school leaders say immigration enforcement and anti-immigrant political rhetoric is turning schools into anxiety areas for students from immigrant families. Absenteeism is up, attendance is down, and some families have literally vanished from the community because they are in fear.

One Tennessee principal shared a tale of parents too terrified to grocery shop for their kids because they want to avoid federal agents.

A Michigan principal said in the article, “We had a couple of students that I’m sorry to say that just stopped coming, and we didn’t know what happened to them. There were rumors that they had left the country and/or gone to a different area of the country where they felt safer.”

Leaving the country voluntarily is one of several outcomes the Trump administration has openly encouraged as part of its broader immigration enforcement strategy. Supporters argue that restoring the rule of law inevitably brings difficult adjustments, while critics point to stories like these as evidence of collateral consequences for “innocent” families.

And while schools lament the disruption, the reality remains that those five million children are the direct consequence of immigration laws being ignored for years by Democrats and spineless RINOs who refused to pass real reform and allowed Biden’s open borders for years and years. ICE didn’t create this problem – it inherited it, and enforcing the law isn’t something they should have to apologize for.