500K+ School-Age Migrant Children Have Arrived Since 2022

On October 5, Reuters published a little-noticed article that includes a stunning factoid: “More than half a million school-age migrant children have arrived in the U.S. since 2022”. When your property taxes go up, or your kid falls behind, or your local school district struggles to find “English as a second language” (ESL) teachers, you’ll know why.

The Total Figures

Reuters cites to “records collected by Syracuse University”, and usually when the alma mater of Joe Biden and Jim Brown is cited in connection with immigration stats, they were first compiled by the school’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

I have gone searching for the actual numbers on the TRAC website, however, and have been unable to find them. That said, the figure Reuters cites is – if anything – a little low.

According to DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), more than 325,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) were transferred by CBP to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) between October 2021 (the first month of FY 2022) and the end of June 2024, the vast majority to be released to “sponsors” in the United States.

Between the UACs and the kids in FMUs who have been released, likely somewhere between 700,000 and a million school-aged migrant children have entered illegally in the past three fiscal years.

That figure does not include migrant children in family units (FMUs) who crossed illegally with adults and are now attending school here. Between FY 2022 and August 2024, more than 1.646 million FMU migrants have been apprehended at the Southwest border by Border Patrol agents. CBP, however, does not differentiate between adults and children in its FMU encounter figures.

Between the UACs and the kids in FMUs who have been released, however, likely somewhere between 700,000 and more than 1 million school-aged migrant children have entered illegally in the past three fiscal years.

To put that figure into context, New York City – the nation’s largest school district – had an enrollment in 2019 of just fewer than 985,000 pupils, while number 2 – the Los Angeles Unified School District – had fewer than 634,000 enrolled students that year, according to the Census Bureau.

The half million newcomer students as reported by Reuters would be in third place, well ahead of Chicago (378,199 pupils), if they were all combined in one school district. But of course, they’re not all in one school district; they’re spread all over the country.

The Issues

To understand why that diffuse population of migrant children is an issue, here’s the full quote from Reuters, which can be found in paragraph 4 of that article:

More than half a million school-age migrant children have arrived in the U.S. since 2022, according to immigration court records collected by Syracuse University, exacerbating overcrowding in some classrooms; compounding teacher and budget shortfalls; forcing teachers to grapple with language barriers and inflaming social tensions in places unaccustomed to educating immigrant students.

Education being what it is these days, the Reuters report includes quotes from local teachers and administrators who put the best face on the challenges they face after the outlet polled more than 10,000 school districts – 75 of which, across 23 states, actually responded.

The parents plainly knew that they were breaking the law, but given how little the Biden-Harris administration did to prevent them from coming here illegally, they likely viewed it all as a welcome invitation.

That said, 42 of those districts said that they’d had to hire more ESL teachers, 15 reported issues communicating with parents, 17 asked for more state funding to help cover costs (12 received it, but in one New Jersey school district, “it still wasn’t enough to hire an ESL supervisor”).

Textbooks in native languages, of course, are an issue as is staffing: 49 of the 75 school districts claimed that their teachers were only “partially trained” (31), “not well trained” (8), or not trained at all (2) in meeting the needs of migrant students.

Education is far and away the largest expense for most local governments, accounting for an estimated $800 billion of their costs in 2021, and property taxes are their largest source of income (counties and cities brought in an estimated $800 billion in assessments that year, as well).

Most property tax assessments are done on an annual or multi-year basis, and consequently that’s how school budgets are usually determined, as well. For that reason, most districts were wholly unprepared for the surge in migrant students that they have received.

The Blame

None of this should be viewed as blaming the migrant children themselves cum students. Some – and likely a significant number – of those UACs were nearing the age of 18 when they arrived, but few if any of their younger peers or the children in FMUs made the individual decisions to come here illegally.

Nor, however, can you really put all the blame the parents of those children. They plainly knew that they were breaking the law, but given how little the Biden-Harris administration did to prevent them from coming here illegally, they likely viewed it all as a welcome invitation.

It will take years – and probably hundreds of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local spending – for schools to accommodate the 500,000 to 1 million migrant children who have entered the United States since the start of FY 2022. In the interim, expect your taxes to rise and your local schools (and teachers and pupils) to struggle.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Reuters-500K-SchoolAge-Migrant-Children-Have-Arrived-2022

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