Trump's crackdown on immigration is taking a toll on child care workers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not long after President Donald Trump took office in January, staff at CentroNía bilingual preschool began rehearsing what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to the door. As ICE became a regular presence in their historically Latino neighborhood this summer, teachers stopped taking children to nearby parks, libraries and playgrounds that had once been considered an extension of the classroom.

And in October, the school scrapped its beloved Hispanic Heritage Month parade, when immigrant parents typically dressed their children in costumes and soccer jerseys from their home countries. ICE had begun stopping staff members, all of whom have legal status, and school officials worried about drawing more unwelcome attention.

All of this transpired before ICE officials arrested a teacher inside a Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago in October. The event left immigrants who work in child care, along with the families who rely on them, feeling frightened and vulnerable.

Trump’s push for the largest mass deportation in history has had an outsized impact on the child care field, which is heavily reliant on immigrants and already strained by a worker shortage. Immigrant child care workers and preschool teachers, the majority of whom are working and living in the U.S. legally, say they are wracked by anxiety over possible encounters with ICE officials. Some have left the field, and others have been forced out by changes to immigration policy.

At CentroNía, CEO Myrna Peralta said all staff must have legal status and work authorization. But ICE's presence and the fear it generates have changed how the school operates.

“That really dominates all of our decision making,” Peralta said.

Instead of taking children on walks through the neighborhood, staff members push children on strollers around the hallways. And staff converted a classroom into a miniature library when the school scrapped a partnership with a local library.

Schools and child care centers were once off limits to ICE officials, in part to keep children out of harm’s way. But those rules were scrapped not long after Trump's inauguration. Instead, ICE officials are urged to exercise “common sense.”

Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, defended ICE officials' decision to enter the Chicago preschool. She said the teacher, who had a work permit and was later released, was a passenger in a car that was being pursued by ICE officials. She got out of the car and ran into the preschool, McLaughlin said, emphasizing the teacher was “arrested in the vestibule, not in the school.” The man who had been driving went inside the preschool, where officials arrested him.

About one-fifth of America’s child care workers were born outside the United States and one-fifth are Latino. The proportion of immigrants in some places, particularly large cities, is much higher: In the District of Columbia, California and New York, around 40% of the child care workforce is foreign-born, according to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

Immigrants in the field tend to be better educated than those born in the United States. Those from Latin America help satisfy the growing demand for Spanish-language preschools, such as CentroNía, where some parents enroll their kids to give them a head start learning another language.

The American Immigration Council estimated in 2021 that more than three-quarters of immigrants working in early care and education were living and working in the U.S. legally. Preschools like CentroNía conduct rigorous background checks, including verifying employees have work authorization.

Beyond the deportation efforts, the Trump administration in recent months has stripped legal status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Many of them had fled violence, poverty or natural disasters in their homes and received Temporary Protected Status, which allowed them to live and work legally in the U.S. But Trump ended those programs, forcing many out of their jobs — and the country. Just last month, 300,000 immigrants from Venezuela lost their protected status.

CentroNía lost two employees when they lost their TPS, Peralta said, and a Nicaraguan immigrant working as a teacher left on his own. Tierra Encantada, which runs Spanish immersion preschools in several states, had a dozen teachers leave when they lost their TPS.

At CentroNía, one staff member was detained by ICE while walking down the street and held for several hours, all the while unable to contact colleagues to let them know where she was. She was released that evening, said the school's site director, Joangelee Hernández-Figueroa.

Another staff member, teacher Edelmira Kitchen, said she was pulled over by ICE on her way to work in September. Officials demanded she get out of her car so they could question her. Kitchen, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, said she refused and they eventually let her go.

“I felt violated of my rights," Kitchen said.

Hernández-Figueroa said ICE's heightened presence during the federal intervention in the city has taken a toll on employees' mental health. Some have gone to the hospital with panic attacks in the middle of the school day.

When the city sent mental health consultants to the school earlier this year as part of a partnership with the Department of Behavioral Health, school leadership had them work with teachers rather than students, worried their anguish would spill over to the classroom.

“If the teachers aren't good,” Hernández-Figueroa said, “the kids won't be good either.”

It's not just adults who are feeling more anxious. At a Guidepost Montessori School in Portland, Oregon, teachers observed preschoolers change in the weeks after an ICE arrest near the school in July. After pulling over a father who was driving his child to the school, officials encountered him in the school parking lot and tried to arrest him. In the ensuing commotion, the school went into lockdown: Children were pulled off the playground, and teachers played loud music and had children sing along to drown out the yelling.

Amy Lomanto, who heads the school, said teachers noticed more outbursts among students, and more students retreating to what the school calls “the regulation station,” an area in the main office with fidget toys kids can use to calm themselves.

She said what unfolded at her school underscored that even wealthy communities, like the one the school serves, are not immune from exposure to these kinds of events.

“With the current situation, more and more of us are likely to experience this kind of trauma,” she said. “That level of fear now is permeating a lot more throughout our society.”

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Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students as they play in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Edelmira Kitchen, a teaching artist at CentroNia, poses for a portrait in a classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Edelmira Kitchen, a teaching artist at CentroNia, poses for a portrait in a classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Belkis Mendez, builds with a Prek-5 student during playtime in their classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Flor Perez encourages her class of 2-year-olds in a walk around the school in lieu of outdoor walks around the neighborhood during school time at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Families leave CentroNia at the end of the school day in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could make it harder for convicted murderers to show their lives should be spared because they are intellectually disabled.

The justices are taking up an appeal from Alabama, which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts found is intellectually disabled and shielded from execution.

The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002.

Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.

The issue in Smith's case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith's five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten-level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.

The Supreme Court has held in cases in 2014 and 2017 that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.

Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled. The justices had previously sent his case back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta, where the judges affirmed that they had taken a “holistic” approach to Smith's case, seemingly in line with the high court ruling.

But the justices said in June they would take a new look at the case.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Smith hasn’t met his burden of showing an IQ of 70 or below, and the state wrote in its brief that the discussion of a holistic approach is an unjustified expansion of the Supreme Court rulings.

“He has multiple scores in the seventies,” Marshall said in a phone interview. He said the question is about how to address a continuum of scores. “I don’t think picking and choosing those at the bottom are the way that the court will ultimately go,” Marshall said.

The Trump administration and 20 states are supporting Alabama in the case. Smith “did not meet his burden of proving his IQ was likely 70 or below,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the administration.

Smith's lawyers argue the lower courts followed the law in conducting a “holistic assessment of all relevant evidence” in a case with borderline IQ scores.

Rights groups focused on disabilities wrote in a brief supporting Smith that "intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid.”

Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 beating death of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. Van Dam was found dead in his pickup truck. Prosecutors said he had been beaten to death with a hammer and robbed of $150, his boots and tools.

A federal judge in 2021 vacated Smith’s death sentence, though she acknowledged “this is a close case.”

Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of 70 or below, along with significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and the onset of those issues before the age of 18.

Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama.

FILE - The Supreme Court facade is seen in Washington, Nov. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)