Daniel Espana is one of a dozen clinical social workers who serve new immigrants in Oakland’s public schools. Based out of Rudsdale Continuation School in deep East Oakland, Espana provides mental health care and case management to students aged 16 to 22 who arrived in the United States within the last three years.
In an interview with The Oaklandside, Espana recalled a newcomer student who’d left his family in Florida to move to Oakland to care for his young son, whose mother lives here. Earlier this year, Espana said, some of the student’s family members in Florida got deported.
“That student now no longer comes to school,” Espana said. “He’s like, ‘I’m just gonna work because I don’t have anyone else here to support me and my child.’”
In Espana’s six years in this role, he said he’s seen firsthand the pressures facing newly arrived students and their families, which he said have only worsened under the second Trump administration. Though deportation isn’t a new concern for his students, Espana said their fears have intensified since ICE raids have become more frequent and unpredictable.
“I’ve had students stop showing up to school because they have deep fears and anxieties of being detained,” he said.
Espana said the experience of the young man from Florida wasn’t unique; many students he’s met with have had to shift their priorities from school to work.
“Instead of finishing their education,” he said, “students are working to try to support their families abroad as much as they can, because they fear that they’ll be deported soon.”
The students he serves, Espana said, have “rich, complex stories and so many talents. They’re here to pursue a new life and an education, but they experience a lot of barriers in that process.”
A district dedicated to newcomers
Since 2013, the Oakland Unified School District has staffed an office of English Language Learners and Multilingual Achievement, known as ELLMA, which oversees programs for the district’s more than 3,000 newcomers. In recent months, because of increased enforcement, raids, and threatening rhetoric from the Trump Administration, the office has been working to bolster its support for newcomer students and their families, reinforcing the district’s sanctuary policy, and training school staff on what to do if ICE agents show up at schools.
The office has two arms: One provides instructional support and professional development for teachers and school staff and curriculum development for dual language programs and English language acquisition. The other is a student services team that helps students and their families get acclimated to the U.S. That can include everything from offering winter coats or a backpack full of school supplies to connecting families with Medi-Cal — California’s Medicaid plan — or legal services.
The office also leads implementation of OUSD’s sanctuary policy, which means ensuring that school staff are trained on how to interact with immigration enforcement agents if they show up to schools. The school board first passed the sanctuary policy in 2016 following Trump’s first election, reaffirming the right of children to attend school regardless of their immigration status.
According to district protocols, if school staff are confronted by ICE officers, they are to refer them to the school principal. Teachers and staff are trained not to share any information with agents.
Hundreds of unaccompanied minors
Newcomer enrollment in Oakland Unified has fluctuated over the last several years, said Nicole Knight, the executive director of ELLMA, the office that serves newcomers. Last year, 3,374 newcomers were enrolled, down from 3,638 during the 2023-2024 school year. Together, newcomers make up roughly 10% of OUSD’s student population.
About one in five of those newcomer students are unaccompanied youth, according to district data. Last year, there were 633.
OUSD data shows that the top home languages of newcomer students are Spanish, followed by Mam, an indigenous Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, and Arabic. Guatemala has been the top birth country for newcomers since at least 2017.
A few weeks into the school year, newcomer enrollment at the middle school level is on target to match the district’s projections, said Kilian Betlach, the district’s enrollment director. As of Aug. 29, 430 middle school newcomers were registered — almost the district’s projection of 433. Last year at this time, OUSD had received 450 newcomers but had only projected 377, requiring the district to add an additional newcomer cohort at Elmhurst United Middle School.
High school numbers are a different story. Three weeks into the school year, OUSD had enrolled 1,088, far lower than its projection of 1,235. The biggest drop, Betlach said, has been in the number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Oakland.
“Both because of changes to domestic conditions in some of the countries where we see a lot of immigration, e.g., El Salvador, and because of the political situation, it is far less viable for families to send a 17- and a 12-year-old to cross borders on their own,” Betlach said in an email to The Oaklandside.
Elementary school newcomer numbers are not tracked as easily because at that level, newly arrived students participate in the general education programs, as opposed to older kids, who are placed in newcomer-specific programs in middle and high schools.
But a slight dip in the numbers has not decreased work for the district’s teams supporting newcomer students.
“Oakland has always been a microcosm of the global immigration patterns,” Knight said. “We are seeing the effect of less families coming in. However, the needs of the families that we serve have really intensified. It’s due to the level of fear in the community around immigration status and threats from ICE.”
Knight said her office can see community fears in the attendance data. She said attendance staff at schools have reported that sometimes when they call about an absence, parents have said they’re not bringing their child to school because they’re scared.
“That palpable fear around attendance is relatively new for us,” Knight said. “It’s devastating that we have families and students who are scared to come to school. I believe that the vast majority of our families and students understand that our schools are safe places, but getting to and returning from school is scary right now.”
In response, Knight’s office has expanded efforts to support students’ families, working with them to get their asylum applications in quickly if they qualify, or assisting them with scheduling virtual court appointments and ICE check-ins.
Threats to federal funding
In addition to increasing immigration enforcement, the Trump Administration has rescinded federal guidance that instructed districts to support students who are learning English and has attempted to roll back funding for those programs. Last year, OUSD received about $2.6 million in Title III funds for immigrant students and English learners.
Knight said that while it’s disappointing to see the government rescind the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the federal Education Department under President Barack Obama — which asked districts to ensure that English learners “can participate meaningfully and equally” — it doesn’t change the district’s responsibility to offer an adequate education for each student who walks through the school doors.
But the threat of revoked funding has serious implications. Much of the work that the newcomer office does is funded through Title III, including staff salaries. If that money goes away, the district’s duty to educate students will remain, but with far fewer resources.
“If we don’t have the federal funding, that means it’s coming from somewhere else,” Knight said. “That then impacts other programs and potentially other students. If these titles go away, that’s going to be detrimental to our ability to support all students, and put more of the burden on teachers who already face pretty formidable challenges serving such a diverse group.”
Espana, the social worker at Rudsdale, is particularly frustrated that the newcomer program’s funding is tied to attendance. His employment contract stipulates that one clinical social worker will be hired for every 100 newcomer students enrolled in OUSD. That means immigration crackdowns can directly affect staffing.
“It sucks that our support is tied to a ratio,” he said. “As the numbers decrease, we’re either going to consolidate newcomer programs in the school district, or some of my colleagues might lose their jobs, which I’m afraid of.”
