Advancement Project Releases Action Kit 2.0 As ICE Arrests Escalate
October 1, 2026
Washington, DC – Today, Advancement Project and Alliance for Educational Justice released the Protecting Immigrant Students Action Kit 2.0, a free, field-tested playbook for keeping ICE out of schools and keeping immigrant students safe, enrolled, and learning. The kit’s resources come directly from lessons learned by communities in Chicago, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and beyond as they organized against ICE raids and National Guard deployments over the past year.
Advancement Project released the original Action Kit in March 2025, just two months into the Trump-Vance administration, to help schools, families, and organizers prepare for immigration enforcement targeting students. Protecting Immigrant Students Action Kit 2.0 is the toolkit built from 18 months of what communities actually lived through and won.
In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rescinded a 2011 policy that prevented ICE from intruding on sensitive locations or protected areas, including schools, hospitals and churches. Since then, immigration enforcement operations have escalated around schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods where youth live and walk to class, and school attendance rates have plummeted as a result.. ICE agents are masking, refusing to identify themselves, and driving in unmarked cars, adding to the intimidation of families. This summer, ICE arrests have quietly increased to record highs.
Protecting Immigrant Students Action Kit 2.0 turns the lessons of the past year into tools any school board, educator, or parent can put to use now, including:
The action kit is arriving at a moment when fear is compounding: more than 100 districts now feed Flock camera data into a national law enforcement database, and the National Guard remains in six cities. Students who have walked out to protect their classmates have been met with suspensions and police force in return and communities have beaten attempts to gut Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 ruling that prevents schools from limiting immigrant students’ access to a public education.
“No child should have to choose between their education and their family’s safety. When ICE comes to a city, students stay home out of fear, and the data from numerous U.S. cities makes clear that this administration’s raids are also an attack on children’s education,” says Carmen Daugherty, Executive Director of Advancement Project. “Students are leading in response, walking out for their classmates and their communities, and they deserve protection, not suspension. Action Kit 2.0 is designed to give communities on the frontlines the tools that we know have already worked, for every school board, educator, and parent who needs them.”
“Young people went back to school this fall carrying a fear no child should have to carry: that their parents wouldn’t be able to drop off or pick them up from school because immigration enforcement would be waiting for them on the way or outside of school. Schools cannot claim to be neutral spaces while ICE operates on their grounds. Every district leader, educator, and staff member has the power to shut the door on immigration enforcement, refuse to share student information, and keep immigrant youth in the classroom where they belong. We’re calling on schools across the country to draw a hard line and keep ICE out and away from schools,” said Leidy Robledo, National Co-Director at Alliance for Educational Justice.
Protecting Immigrant Students Action Kit 2.0, a project of the #PoliceFreeSchools campaign, is available here.
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Advancement Project is a next-generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, Advancement Project exists to fulfill America’s promise of a caring, inclusive, and just democracy. The organization uses innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high-impact policy change. Advancement Project is a co-convener of the National Campaign for Police Free Schools, a formation of 20+ youth-led grassroots organizations fighting to end the criminalization of youth in the classroom, create liberatory educational spaces, and implement an affirmative vision of safety and transformative justice. Visit www.advancementproject.org to learn more.
The Alliance for Educational Justice is a national network of 30 youth-led and intergenerational groups across 12 states and 14 cities dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. Formed by its members, the Alliance brings two decades’ experience of building powerful campaigns for systemic change at the local, state and federal level. Core to us is a belief in youth organizing as an approach and proven methodology to develop youth leadership, facilitate personal transformation and create community change. We are a co-convener of the National Campaign for Police Free schools, a formation of 20+ youth-led grassroots organizations fighting to end the criminalization of youth in the classroom, create liberatory educational spaces, and implement an affirmative vision of safety and transformative justice. Visit policefreeschools.org to learn more
