Excerpts
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One of Trump’s executive orders, signed shortly after he took office, undid restrictions that kept US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) from raiding schools and childcare programs, the latter of which typically serve children ages five and under. As a result, America’s strict new immigration policies are hitting some of its very youngest – as well as those who look after them.
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It’s not just the children in childcare programs around the country who aren’t showing up. Damaris Alvarado-Rodriguez closed a classroom at one of her childcare centers in Philadelphia nine days after Trump’s executive orders were signed.
Despite having green cards, the teachers in that classroom, which serves one-year-olds, were too nervous to come to work. Since Trump took office, his officials have targeted Philadelphia and other so-called sanctuary cities that limit their cooperation on immigration enforcement. Immigration agents have been a constant presence in the neighborhoods that house Alvarado-Rodriguez’s three centers.
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Immigration policy can have a chilling effect on communities, causing immigrants to shy away from jobs that could increase their visibility to law enforcement agencies, said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who studied the policy’s impact on childcare between 2008 and 2014. Because America’s childcare system is so reliant on the work of immigrants, “the impacts are instantaneous”, he added.
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