Alex Rodriguez Silva never thought he’d leave South Florida. But in August, after three years in Hialeah, he packed his family into a van and drove to Denver. His decision came down to one thing—fear that immigration officials could detain his fiancée, Ana, who overstayed her visa, while she dropped off their kids at school.
“Every day, we were afraid. My kids deserve a place where they feel safe,” Silva said in an interview translated from Portuguese.
Silva’s story echoes a broader trend playing out across Florida. Some of the state’s largest public school districts—Miami-Dade, Broward, and Orange counties—have reported steep and unexpected drops in student enrollment this school year. School officials and community advocates point to a spike in fear among immigrant families following changes to federal immigration enforcement rules.
At the heart of the concern is the rollback of protections that once restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from operating in so-called “sensitive locations” like schools and churches. Since January, those restrictions have been lifted, technically allowing agents to conduct operations near campuses. While no immigration raids have occurred in Florida schools since the policy shift, the fear alone has made an impact.
In Orange County, enrollment was projected to drop by about 3,000 students due to transfers to charter schools. Instead, the district lost 6,600 students. Stephanie Vanos, a member of the Orange County school board, says many of the missing students come from immigrant households.
“Allowing immigration enforcement around schools has created a culture of fear,” Vanos said. “Families are pulling back—not enrolling, not showing up.”
Similar declines are happening in Broward County, where public schools saw a decrease of over 11,300 students this year. Broward School Board Chair Debbi Hixon said agents haven’t entered schools, but the anxiety around enforcement is real.
“Students should feel safe in schools,” Hixon said. “Instead, they’re living with the threat that someone in their life could be taken.”
Miami-Dade County has also been affected. Superintendent Jose Dotres reported a loss of more than 13,000 students this school year, more than double the anticipated decline. Luisa Santos, a school board member, said the district usually gains thousands of new students, especially from out of state. But that number has fallen dramatically.
“This isn’t just statistics—it’s people deciding not to come to Florida or leaving it out of fear their families could be torn apart,” she said.
Dotres noted that charter school growth could also explain part of the enrollment drop. However, incidents like the January deportation of Wualner Sauceda, a science teacher with DACA status in Hialeah, have added to community fears. He was detained during a scheduled immigration hearing and deported to Honduras a month later.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, said even isolated enforcement actions send waves through school communities. “When a beloved teacher is deported, it changes the atmosphere. It creates fear among students who already feel vulnerable,” he said.
For Silva’s family, the tipping point came when their older child began refusing to get out of the car at school drop-off—terrified that Ana might be detained. Silva said, “All she wanted was to be involved in our kids’ lives. But now, we live with the constant anxiety that ICE could show up anywhere—at school, on the way to work, at the grocery store.”
Moving to Colorado brought short-term relief, but Silva says his family remains wary.
“We left Florida because it didn’t feel safe anymore. But the United States, as a whole, doesn’t feel like a safe place to raise kids if your loved ones aren’t citizens,” he said. “It feels like we’re always one knock at the window away from losing everything.”
Florida’s schools are now trying to navigate this shifting landscape. With shrinking enrollments and growing fears, educators say the state must consider how immigration policy, even indirectly, steers families away from public classrooms. For now, families like Silva’s are making hard choices—quietly disappearing from one community, hoping to find peace in the next.
