Fearing deportation, undocumented immigrant families in South Jersey may be pulling their kids out of school, advocates say

Fearing deportation, some undocumented immigrant parents in South Jersey have been pulling their children out of schools to limit potential family exposure to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, advocates say.

Other undocumented immigrants in the area are securing power-of-attorney documents so friends or relatives can look after their children if the parents are removed from the country.

And a few parents are so weary of being worried they will be detained and separated from their children that they are giving up on America altogether and self-deporting their families before ICE can do it, according to Jeff DeCristofaro, executive director of the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice.

“It’s all about the kids,” said DeCristofaro, whose nonprofit provides aid to immigrants and people living in poverty in South Jersey. “And what families have to do to keep themselves together.”

Having lived through four months of pressure to cast them out of the country since President Donald Trump took office, undocumented immigrants on the farms and in the cities of South Jersey remain cognizant of their vulnerabilities with a primary goal in mind — protecting their children.

In one apparent effort to safeguard kids and families, parents seem to be pulling their children out of schools, according to Gabily Gonzalez, an immigrant rights worker and founder of Cerrando La Brecha (Bridging the Gap), a Camden nonprofit that helps migrants.

“We’re noticing rising numbers of kids from families of undocumented or mixed immigration status not attending schools in South Jersey anymore, and it seems that parents are taking them out,” Gonzalez said.

One undocumented parent said that is precisely what she has done.

“I took my kids out of high school in Camden for their protection and mine,” said the woman, a single mother who fled Nicaragua who asked not to be identified to avoid deportation.

She answered Inquirer questions through advocate and interpreter Kimberly Valle, regional director of ImmSchools in Camden, an immigrant advocacy and education nonprofit.

“We came to a country of liberty where we feel harassed. Imagine the stress on the children. … They don’t go out, they’re not enjoying their youth, being restrained from school.”

Another Camden parent who asked not to be identified for fear of deportation said through Valle that she has decided to prevent her son from going to college because he would be too much of a target for ICE.

“It’s a huge anguish … I wouldn’t wish on any family. It’s impossible not to feel the pressure. I’ve never experienced something [like this], especially when your children are being affected.“

On May 6, in collaboration with the Camden advocacy group Parents Invincible, Gonzalez distributed surveys to 6,000 people, mostly undocumented immigrant parents in Camden, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties.

Parents were asked questions such as “Are you afraid to send your child to school because of your family’s immigrant status?”

Answers are just starting to come in: Among the first 25 to respond, 20 said yes.

“Trump created so much fear that ICE would take kids from schools that we started seeing high rates of absenteeism in some city schools around March,” Camden City Council President Angel Fuentes said. “But we told moms and dads, ‘Your kids need their education,’ and the kids started coming back.”

Throughout South Jersey, principals in both parochial and public schools report seeing fewer kids in class because of parental fears over ICE, DeCristofaro noted.

ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment.

About 495,000 undocumented immigrants live in New Jersey, according to research done for The Inquirer by the Center for Migration Studies, a think tank in New York.

As many as 70% of farmworkers in South Jersey are undocumented, according to CATA, a nonprofit in Glassboro helping farmworkers and the Latino immigrant community in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

Most undocumented immigrants in New Jersey come from Mexico and Central America, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank. The majority live in the region year-round, advocates said.

At this point, DeCristofaro said, many undocumented immigrants are so rattled, they can no longer live with the uncertainty that ICE could come knocking at any time.

That’s why more and more are saying, “‘I’m done,’ and flat-out ask how they can go home,” DeCristofaro said.

“Self-deportation is one of the things Trump wanted. And, believe me, it’s working, because people are scared of what’ll happen to their kids.”

Leaning into that, Trump has said he is willing to incentivize self-deportation.

“We are making it as easy as possible for illegal aliens to leave America,” he said, explaining that people who are willing to depart voluntarily can use a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to help them on their way.

Introduced in March, the app — called CBP Home — can be accessed by an undocumented immigrant to interface with the government, which might be willing to give a person who is self-deporting a $1,000 stipend as well as help booking an airline to fly out of the country.

Undocumented families in the region are preparing for the worst, said Karla Tapia Pliego, a Cumberland County notary who works with undocumented families.

“We’re not living through normal days,” she said.

Pliego said she has been helping undocumented parents who want assurances that someone they designate will be responsible for their children should ICE arrest them.

“I feel that, as of early May, a lot of families have completed their documents, and are ready, should any emergencies arise,” Pliego said.

DeCristofaro, who is also a notary, said people mistakenly believe power-of-attorney documents are meant to leave the children of undocumented immigrants in the United States under the care of a relative or family friend in perpetuity.

“That’s not how it works,” he said. “Who wants someone else raising their kids?”

The majority of documents families sign are meant to be stopgaps only, he said.

“If the parents are deported, they expect to see their children again,” DeCristofaro said.

The people designated to have power of attorney are there only to facilitate the children’s return to the deported parents back in their home country, he added.

In February, when Trump began deportations in earnest, both undocumented farmworkers as well as the farmers who employ them on South Jersey farms believed that, come growing season, huge numbers of workers would be removed.

That has not happened.

“ICE hasn’t messed with anybody I know,” said a Salem County farmer who did not want to be identified because he fears authorities would use him to pursue his undocumented workers.

But that doesn’t mean farmhands’ pulses have not risen whenever they have worked a field this spring, said Edgar Aquino-Huerta, farmworker organizer for CATA.

“Every farm I visit, people are obviously scared,” Aquino-Huerta said.

Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration the signature issue of his three presidential campaigns. And it remains one of strongest polling issues — though support has dipped from earlier in the year.

An April survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 46% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than his approval rating on the economy and trade with other countries. But 53% of respondents disapproved of Trump on immigration, the poll found.

A plurality of 48% said that Trump had gone too far in his deportation effort, while 18% said he had not gone far enough, the poll found. The remaining 32% said Trump’s efforts were “about right,” according to the AP.

Ultimately, DeCristofaro said, Trump has kept his word to the American public in creating a climate of fear for undocumented immigrants.

“Trump has done everything he promised, and more,” DeCristofaro said. “This is how you break the human spirit. And it’s broken.”