Literature Review
Literature review
Significance of June ICE Raids in Los Angeles
The two ICE raid locations used in this project, the Westlake Home Depot and a manufacturing site in the Fashion District, Ambiance Apparel were selected for their substantial impact on the arrest patterns seen in the data. The Westlake Home Depot experienced repeated ICE enforcement actions beginning on June 6, while the Fashion District raid resulted in the arrest of 40 immigrant workers. Ambiance Apparel was one of the four businesses raided on June 6th. Together, these events along with many others contributed to the unusually high arrest counts observed during this period.
Recent Immigration Raids Increased Student Absences (2025) by Thomas Dee
Thomas S. Dee’s Recent Immigration Raids Increased Student Absences (2025) examines how January 2025’s “Operation Return to Sender,” a sweeping enforcement action that “sent shock waves across the Central Valley,” affected student attendance in California’s predominantly Hispanic, immigrant, agricultural region (Dee, p. 4).
Dee estimates that the raids increased daily absences by roughly 22 percent, a statistically significant effect that persisted through February, indicating that families’ concerns continued even after the immediate enforcement actions subsided (Dee 8–9). These impacts were not uniform: younger students (K–5) were more than three times as affected as high schoolers, reflecting heightened parental reluctance to send younger children to school during enforcement surges.
Dee’s findings directly support the rationale for my project investigating attendance trends in Los Angeles schools near the June 2025 ICE raids near the Westlake Home Depot and apparel manufacturer, Ambiance Apparel. While their study uses regression and event-study methods, my approach uses descriptive exploratory analysis of annual absence patterns by reason (excused vs. unexcused).
The study estimates that the surge in absences amounted to about 1.4 additional missed days per student over 725,000 lost instructional days region-wide, reflecting what Dee identifies as a “leading indicator of broad and developmentally harmful stress” for students and families (Dee 10). Beyond learning loss, these spikes jeopardize district funding, exacerbate post-pandemic absenteeism, and destabilize schools. Taken together, Dee’s findings provide the theoretical and empirical basis for interpreting attendance shifts in my dataset as part of a broader, well-documented pattern: interior immigration enforcement disrupts schooling and signals heightened stress among already vulnerable student populations (Dee 9–10).
Repercussions of a Raid: Health and Education Outcomes of Children Entangled in Immigration Enforcement by Carolyn Heinrich Mónica Hernández Mason Shero
Heinrich, Hernández, and Shero (2023) examine the April 2018 ICE workplace raid in Morristown, Tennessee and document its profound educational and health consequences for children in the surrounding community. The authors show that immigration enforcement creates a broader “climate of fear and mistrust” that affects children regardless of their own legal status (Heinrich, Hernández, & Shero p. 351). Following the raid, children of immigrants experienced a “substantial spike in student absence rates in the month of the raid,” confirming that school attendance is one of the most immediate and sensitive indicators of community-level trauma (Heinrich, Hernández, & Shero, 2023, p. 353).
Their qualitative findings describe children who were afraid to attend school, suffered nightmares, and lived with “constant fear of coming home to find their parents missing” (Heinrich, Hernández, & Shero, 2023, p. 365). Teachers reported attendance “was terrible for the next couple weeks” as families avoided public spaces out of fear of being targeted for looking Hispanic. The raid also caused families to withdraw from essential health services, including skipping the county’s annual children’s health fair held that same day. Quantitatively, the study finds increases in exclusionary discipline and significant rises in behavioral health diagnoses, such as depression, self-harm, substance use, and suicide ideation over the year following the raid (Heinrich, Hernández, & Shero, 2023, p. 353).
Overall, the study shows that immigration raids harm children’s educational engagement and psychological stability, especially those living in mixed-status or immigrant households. These findings directly support the project’s rationale: examining changes in excused and unexcused absences for students attending schools near the June 2025 Westlake Home Depot and Fashion District ICE raids is critical because student attendance functions as an early warning sign of heightened stress and emotional distress. The Tennessee raid demonstrates that absences are not merely administrative numbers but evidence of disrupted routines, emotional strain, and compromised child well-being.