Dayani Espinal sat behind the wheel of her car, waiting to pick up a 12-year-old named Darwin from his school on the West Bank.
It was his first day back after a week away.
“This is today,” Espinal said, pulling up a picture on her phone of a stocky kid heading into the building.
Espinal sent it to his mom that morning, she said, to let her know “he is safe.”
Darwin’s mom has a pending asylum case, so New Orleans Public Radio isn’t using her name. She’s from Honduras, and Darwin was born in the U.S.
His mom reached out to the organization Espinal works for — LA Voz de la Comunidad, a group that supports the Latino community in the greater New Orleans area — for help getting Darwin to school after immigration sweeps intensified this month.
Like many immigrants, she’s afraid to interact with federal agents, so she’s staying inside as much as possible, she said.
Attendance dropped across New Orleans-area schools the week after Thanksgiving, when the operation — dubbed “Catahoula Crunch” officially began.
In Jefferson Parish, which has the largest Hispanic population of any Louisiana school district, 12% of students were absent on Dec. 4, the day after the crackdown started, according to district data.
More than 5,200 students missed school, an increase of more than 3,300 kids compared to the same day last year.
While fewer children were absent last week, attendance was still down by several percentage points compared to the same period last year.
When Espinal got to the school last Wednesday, Darwin’s first day back, he was waiting at the curb.
He smiled shyly and settled himself in the backseat between two booster seats that belonged to Espinal’s kids.
When she asked how his day was, Darwin was polite but brief.
“Good,” he said.
Darwin likes school. His favorite subjects are reading, writing and math.
When he was home for a week, he did “nothing,” he said. “Just bored and the TV.”
His mom said in Spanish that she felt “really bad” and that he rarely misses school.
“I don’t like him missing even one day,” she said through an interpreter.
She said she and Darwin have been staying at her boss’s house in New Orleans, so she can keep working without having to drive.
“I felt overwhelmed because I couldn’t find a way to get him to school,” she said.
There are hundreds of parents in the New Orleans area who, like Darwin’s mom, need help, or aren’t sending their children to school at all, said Michelle Aguirre, LA Voz’s project coordinator. She believes the true total is much higher — potentially in the thousands.
“They’re not receiving the materials. We’re talking about two weeks without lessons. They’re missing exams,” she said.
Aguirre said LA Voz has received more requests for school transportation than it can handle and needs more Spanish-speaking volunteers. Other community groups and schools are also helping kids get to and from school.
“It’s very hard to quantify the impact” of immigration enforcement, Aguirre said, specifically on children. “I think we are at the doors of a big mental health crisis.”
She’s trying to convince families to send their children to school so they don’t fall behind or miss out on meals and other services.
Families are legally required to send their kids, and could end up in trouble if they don’t. If kids miss too much school, they could be held back.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and several immigrant advocacy groups sent a letter to half a dozen school district leaders on Friday, asking them to excuse absences due to immigration enforcement and offer remote learning.
Aguirre said some parents, like Darwin’s mom, just need help getting them there. But others are so afraid, she said, there’s no convincing them.
“You can feel like, ‘I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be apart. I understand that’s good, but I prefer for them to miss a year, a complete year, than feel like something will happen when they are away,’” she said.
They don’t want to be separated, and they won’t send their kids until federal agents leave.
