WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Tuesday authorized federal authorities to conduct immigration arrests on school campuses, a decision a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said would prevent “criminals” from being able to “hide in America’s schools.”
The policy change, which immigration advocates expected, came a day after the president signed dozens of sweeping executive orders that could alter the educational landscape in the United States if left intact.
After being sworn in, the president swiftly moved to undo broad swaths of his predecessor’s regulatory agenda. He ordered the U.S. Department of Education to revoke troves of guidance that schools have relied on for years to maintain compliance with federal law. Many of the rules he targeted explicitly laid out protections for students vulnerable to discrimination or harassment due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
In his inauguration speech, he announced the directive unapologetically.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said.
He also imposed a flurry of changes to curb immigration. He signed a controversial decree to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution. And he instituted a hiring freeze across the federal government, including at the Education Department, which has long suffered from flat funding and inadequate staff in some of its most important offices.
Presidents have limited authority to enact immediate change. So many of Trump’s more contentious edicts will face considerable legal challenges. A coalition of 18 states filed suit Tuesday against the federal government to stop the birthright citizenship ban. That litigation followed a separate court challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union.
More lawsuits are likely coming down the pike. Since most colleges and K-12 schools are bound by certain federal rules, a fresh sense of confusion has set in among school officials about which government regulations to follow.
“Let’s be clear that these executive orders cannot create or change our laws,” said Fatima Goss Graves, the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, a progressive group, in a statement. “Only Congress and the Supreme Court can do that.”
Apart from compliance concerns, Trump’s critics say his suite of actions has already emboldened those who seek to harm marginalized people at school, especially undocumented or transgender students.
“Donald Trump’s actions today do nothing to help students learn and grow,” Becky Pringle, the head of the National Education Association, the country’s largest educators union, said in a statement Monday. “They need to be respected for who they are, no matter their race, place, background, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
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Sex discrimination laws up in the air
Conservative groups like Parents Defending Education celebrated Trump’s decision Monday to force the Education Department to scrap old guidance about supporting queer and transgender youth.
“Opposition to progressives’ gender ideology spans both racial and political lines,” said Nicole Neily, the organization’s president, in a statement. “We’re delighted that he kept his promise to the American people to put an end to this madness and look forward to the Department of Education putting in place policies and procedures that provide clarity to schools and families alike.”
Former President Joe Biden took big steps during his four years in office to use the levers of the federal government to support LGBTQ+ students and teachers. Under his leadership, the Education Department pursued a rewrite of a landmark sex discrimination law known as Title IX, formally broadening the definition of sexual harassment and misconduct to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
Days before Biden left office, a federal judge halted those rules – which had only briefly taken effect in a patchwork of states, school districts and colleges amid legal wrangling. Now, in the wake of Trump’s decrees, the regulatory whiplash has school administrators feeling “just distraught,” said Brett Sokolow, a higher education attorney and the chair of the board of the Association of Title IX Administrators.
“Why are we being told these completely opposite things?” he said. “It feels like we’re living in two different Americas.”
Will a federal hiring freeze slow clarity for schools?
Some clear guidance from Trump’s Education Department, which has yet to staff some top posts, would be helpful, said Melissa Carleton, a higher education attorney.
But the president’s promise to implement a hiring freeze across the federal workforce could complicate that ask, she said.
“Now they’re not going to fill any of the vacancies,” she said. “What’s going to move forward? Probably nothing for a while.”
An Education Department spokesperson declined to answer questions Tuesday about the hiring pause, Trump’s return-to-work mandate for federal workers or the agency’s plans to address the need for new Title IX guidance.
Read more:‘Will I have a job?’ Federal workers full of uncertainty, fear over Trump plans
Deportation fears loom outside the classroom
On Trump’s first full day in office, the Department of Homeland Security officially rescinded a government protocol that prevented federal agents from conducting immigration enforcement at so-called “sensitive locations,” such as schools and churches.
“The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” a DHS spokesperson said.
School administrators have been gearing up for weeks to face the president’s stricter immigration policies.
Massive deportations on the scale Trump has promised could significantly disrupt the American education system. Roughly 6 million U.S. households are home to at least one undocumented resident, according to the Center for Migration Studies. There are approximately a half-million undocumented students enrolled in college nationwide.
The National Education Association on Tuesday circulated new advice for school leaders grappling with the fallout of Trump’s immigration orders.
“As educators, we have accepted the sacred responsibility to protect students – every single student, regardless of their immigration status,” the union’s president said in a statement. “We have a professional and moral responsibility to keep our students safe.”
(This story was edited to correct an error.)
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.