Detroit superintendent: Immigration concerns hurting school attendance

[marmar]

(Detroit News) Detroit's top education leader Thursday night said immigration officials are launching an "attack" on undocumented immigrants in the city in ways that are "unfathomable," a "distraction" and "un-American" — and it is interfering with kids coming to school.

Immigration agents haven't attempted to enter Detroit Public Schools Community District buildings, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said, but some parents have been afraid to bring their children to school for fear they and their children could get picked up by agents amid increased enforcement in southweast Detroit.

It's caused a drop in attendance in heavily immigrant neighborhoods in places like southwest Detroit, he said, and across the district. They started to see the drop last January, he said, in the early days of the Trump administration. A year later, amid a backdrop of surges of immigration agents in places like Minneapolis, families with immigration concerns still struggle to get their kids to school.

Vitti, in his annual State of the Schools address at Renaissance High School on Thursday, said even if the Trump administration or the country believes in the need for stronger immigration enforcement, "the way in which this policy is being implemented with ICE is unfathomable, it's a distraction. It's hurtful to our communities and our children, and we have to find individual ways to address this issue." ................(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2026/01/29/detroit-superintendent-immigration-concerns-hurting-school-attendance-nikolai-vitti/88423557007/