Assembly Bill 49 AND Senate Bill 98 will change the rules for ICE enforcement at California schools. But it’s not yet clear how effective they’ll be.
SB 98 says schools need to notify their communities if ICE agents show up on campus.
"Information about them I believe spreads quickly through the community anyway," said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. He researches how ICE raids affect schools.
"There's certainly no harm in schools supporting the dissemination of that information," Dee said. "But I suspect it'll have much less impact than a policy that seeks to limit ICE activity in and around schools."
That’s where AB 49 comes in. It says immigration officers need a judicial warrant, judicial subpoena, or a court order to enter a non-public part of a school campus.
ICE says it does not conduct enforcement operations at schools and called the bill package a PR stunt.
But ICE raids are impacting California school districts. Schools in targeted communities are seeing fewer students show up and a drop in math scores. This affects student learning, but also school funding and budgets.
" And there's also concern of broader effects," Dee said. "Because of the challenges the ICE raids will create for teachers who are having to confront students who may be traumatized by their experiences."
In a recent study, Dee found that when ICE raids were happening in the Central Valley, daily absences jumped 22 percent.
As far as SB 98 and AB 49, Dee said, " I would think that one of the two bills, the one that seeks to limit ICE activity, has the potential for more teeth."
Both bills took effect immediately.
