Texas Schools Reported Losing 14,200 Immigrant Kids Last Year. The True Number Is Likely Higher.

Texas public schools lost more than 14,200 immigrant students last school year amid aggressive immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump, state data shows.

However, multiple immigration experts said schools likely saw a much larger drop in such students than indicated in official reports as the publicly available data only includes children who meet a specific definition of immigrant under the law.

The decline reflects a 7% drop in enrollment for the state’s immigrant students, the first since the pandemic. Texas identifies immigrant students as children who were not born in the U.S. and have not been attending school in any state for more than three full academic years.

Texas reported 179,423 immigrant students in the 2025-26 year with enrollment declines generally concentrated in large, urban districts.

The specific cause of the decline is unclear, but it comes as Trump promises “the largest mass deportation effort by the federal government in U.S. history” during his second term. Soon after he took office, his administration rescinded a policy on restricting immigration enforcement in protected areas, including schools.

The number of monthly immigration-related arrests in Texas has skyrocketed since January 2025, according to the Deportation Data Project. Based on anecdotes from families, administrators from multiple districts, including Houston and Austin, have attributed much of their overall enrollment declines to an increase in deportations or fears of immigration enforcement.

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Texas provides schools state funding largely based on student attendance, meaning the loss of immigrant children resulted in tens of millions of dollars less for districts already grappling with broader enrollment declines, budget shortfalls, school closures, and staff cuts.

School districts identify children who meet the federal definition of immigrant students, but they do not ask for a students’ immigration or citizenship status. Those who are undocumented but have lived in Texas for years would not necessarily count as immigrant students.

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Several large school districts, including Austin, Frisco, Fort Worth, Katy and Houston, reported overall enrollment declines last year, including higher percentage declines in immigrant students than the statewide average, Texas Education Agency data shows.

Houston ISD, for example, lost 22% of its immigrant students in one year. The state’s largest school district also announced the closure of Las Americas Newcomer School, an alternative campus serving new arrivals to the U.S., in the 2025-26 school year, citing low enrollment. Officials from the district did not respond to a request for comment.

The loss of students due to “inhumane immigration enforcement tactics” will result in a decline in civic engagement, less cultural and social diversity in schools, and damage to the state’s economy and workforce, said Paige Duggins-Clay, the chief legal analyst for the nonprofit Intercultural Development Research Association.

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Overall, the number of students in Texas public schools dropped by approximately 1.4% last year — their first non-pandemic statewide enrollment decline in nearly 40 years, according to analysis from policy research group Texas 2036. The state’s schools lost more than 76,600 students, most of whom were Hispanic and emergent bilingual students.

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