How better edtech management can help schools navigate new immigration rules

One of President Donald Trump’s first moves in the White House was to roll back a longstanding policy that restricted immigration enforcement officers from arresting people at sensitive locations like schools.

The policy change in his first hours after taking office sparked fear among many as school officials and families anticipate interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. As concerns over possible deportations mount, some education leaders have taken action to protect immigrant students.

The Phoenix Union High School District, which is the largest school district in Arizona, passed a resolution last week to prohibit individuals or organizations from entering school sites if it would disrupt the educational environment. In Colorado, Denver Public Schools recently issued guidance instructing school officials to refuse entry into school buildings from government officials who do not have an appointment with the facility. 

And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James have released guidance of their own urging school officials to ask for a warrant from federal officers requesting entry to schools in the state.

But a new brief released by the Center for Democracy and Technology underscores another key issue for the estimated 1.5 million noncitizen students in the U.S.: how schools manage their data and technology they use.

“Though education data and technology is not uniquely deployed among immigrant students, the risk and impact of these technologies, especially when used inaccurately or overzealously, are significantly greater for them than for their peers because of the consequences triggered within the immigration system,” wrote Kristin Woelfel, policy counsel on CDT’s Equity in Civic Technology Team, and the brief’s author.

Students’ information collected by schools or through the technology they use for classwork, for instance, could impact immigration courts’ decisions regarding their deportation, inadmissibility or immigration status renewals, according to the brief.

Take the Albuquerque Public Schools District, for example. The New Mexico school system, like many others in the U.S., filters and blocks certain content like websites and apps deemed harmful or obscene by school administrators. The restrictions can also apply to devices connected to the school’s networks.

The school district has blocked and filtered several websites related to immigration information and resources, including the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website and state-level organizations.

“Treating content associated with a protected demographic like immigrant students as inappropriate … can constitute disparate treatment and result in disproportionate harm to immigrant students if they are punished for attempting to access restricted content or prevented from accessing information about their own identity,” Woelfel wrote.

A student who is flagged for attempting to access those sites could then face administrative or legal repercussions that could be used against them in immigration court, according to the brief.

“These consequences are significant in the context of education data and technology in schools because any documentation of such circumstances (including school suspensions or other school records) can and has been relied on as evidence in immigration proceedings against immigrant students,” Woelfel wrote.

But schools can comply with federal immigration enforcement policies while still upholding the civil protections for immigrant students, Woelfel said in the brief. “[E]ducation agencies have existing infrastructure, including policies and people, that can be used to apply civil rights laws to emerging data and technology uses,” she said.

School officials should reexamine existing policies and practices regarding the data and technology administered by education systems — including algorithms that consider demographic variables like immigration status, surveillance tools that might disproportionately target noncitizen students and information-sharing processes with immigration or law enforcement agencies — to ensure they do not implicate students’ civil rights and protections, Woelfel said.

Another measure schools can take is to establish a privacy officer role, Woelfel wrote. This individual can help enforce or inform education officials about nondiscrimination policies, such as how schools manage student data like their national origin.

School officials should also consider more stringent data collection requirements and policies, such as adopting a “limited directory information policy” that does not include a student’s place of birth, and restricting what information school staff can disclose to immigration or law enforcement entities.

“[E]ducation practices must continue to evolve to account for the growing use of data and technology in schools,” Woelfel wrote. “While legal compliance is an important priority, centering the spirit and intent of these laws by ensuring that all students have the opportunity to be successful, regardless of race, nationality or citizenship status, is even more important.”