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ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ students from immigrant families can be forced to leave the country because of migration enforcement, anti-immigration policies and economic hardship, interrupting their education. It has spurred research on both sides of the border to find ways to help children and families successfully make this often difficult transition.

Among those trying to adjust to school in another country was Martín, a high school student at the time he shared how having to return with his family to Mexico made him feel horrible.

Speaking in a video made by the Seminario Niñez Migrante, the teen talks about how his world was turned upside down and how all his future plans were changed, but he just had to accept it, as do many of those who migrate from the United States. The group’s program out of the College of Sonora in Hermosillo researches and implements ways to ensure meaningful education for migrant children.

Martín’s testimony is followed by numerous schoolchildren who share their experiences in both English and Spanish about having to move suddenly from the the United States to Mexico and how it affected their education and future plans.

The elementary and high school students in the video talk about difficulty understanding the school work, challenges reading in Spanish, and even getting bullied for being different.

A teacher talks about not having help at her school for children returning from the U.S. who don’t speak or read well in Spanish. Parents talk about schools not having space to enroll their child or not giving their child the help they need.

Both parents and teachers talked about needing tutoring and additional support to help the children coming from the U.S. assimilate and do well in their new educational environments.

The video is about a decade old, but the issue remains, and researchers from the Seminario and the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ continue to look for ways to help the children adapt to their new and unexpected situations.

Why they leave

An estimated 35,000 to 45,000 children and teens have left the U.S. for Sonora, Mexico, since 2008, 80% whom left ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, according to research from the Seminario Niñez Migrante. Across Mexico, it’s estimated that more than a million children have returned to Mexico from the U.S. in recent years, according to a 2019 academic study at The College of Mexico.

Many students and families expect to to return to the U.S. at some point, says Gloria Ciria Valdez, coordinator and researcher at the Seminario Niñez Migrante, who has been working for 15 years to help families in this situation.

And 88% of those students who leave ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ have roots in Sonora — parents, grandparents or relatives who are from there, which makes this issue “very important for the regional border perspective and the political, geographic, environmental and economic ties between Sonora and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥,â€� Ciria says.

The Seminario Niñez Migrante, which loosely translates to the Migrant Childhood Seminar, has been working to help migrant children in Sonora since 2007, in a few different categories — children and teens who migrate back to Mexico after living in the U.S., children who are waiting to seek refuge or asylum in the U.S., and children seeking refuge in Sonora.

Over the years, the college has interviewed hundreds of children who returned to Sonora, especially to Nogales, Agua Prieta, San Luis Río Colorado, Hermosillo, Puerto Peñasco, Magdalena de Kino and Cajeme.

“If a student doesn’t respond to the questions the teacher asks or doesn’t raise their hand or doesn’t do their homework, it’s not because they’re lazy,� Ciria says. “It’s because they don’t understand Spanish.�

The Seminario has trained over 1,000 general education public school teachers at the elementary and junior high level to better understand the challenges and strengths of these students.

In 2018, they started a program offering free classes and tutoring to give these children extra help in math, Spanish and social science, taught by teachers who speak English and Spanish.

“What we’re doing is providing a service in the absence of a program here in Mexico,� Ciria says. “Since there isn’t a program that transitions them from the school they came from in the U.S. or Central America to the school they come to here in Sonora, we are supporting that transition.�

University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ researcher Anna Ochoa O’Leary is studying this demographic as well, interviewing students and parents in mixed-status families who returned to Sonora because of an enforcement action or economic barriers.

“The problem is pervasive,� says Ochoa, head of the Department of Mexican American Studies at the UA. “A lot of families have returned to Mexico, but there’s a lot in terms of not knowing what could be done to improve that experience once they return.�

She and her colleague Nolvia Cortez, at the University of Sonora, are identifying challenges these students face to create guidelines to improve their transition and educational experience.

The study, funded with a Fulbright award, is looking at 15- to 17-year-old high school students and 18- to 24-year-old college, or recently graduated students.

These two age groups are in vulnerable stages in their lives where they’re making decisions about their future, making the disruption of having to move to a different country, often with little notice, even more substantial, Ochoa said. For some of the families, the move was thought out and planned, and for others it was prompted by something unexpected, such as an employer of an undocumented parent telling them there is something wrong with their social security number.

“People facing that situation leave because they don’t want to have any problems,� Ochoa says. “They don’t want to be deported. They don’t want to get picked up. And they’re risking family separation. . . . They often choose to return because they don’t want to risk being separated.�

For many older students, the cost of college tuition is totally out of reach, with a secondary issue being that their immigration status can minimize job prospects afterward.

In the U.S., regardless of immigration status, children have the right to attend public school, but after high school that is not the case. Foreign-born and undocumented students are not eligible for federal student aide programs.

Some states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students and those who qualify for DACA and grew up in that state. In ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ those students don’t qualify for in-state tuition and can end up paying more than three times what peers who graduated from ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ high schools right along side them pay.

“Nothing after high school is determined, so that means they’re okay only until the end of the senior year,� Ochoa said. “We’ve done terrible by them, by offering them an illusion, a dream of ‘maybe someday’ and then taking that out from under their feet.�

A right to school

The UA study is looking at how these students’ aspirations and goal setting behaviors changed with the sudden move to Mexico, and what they need to overcome challenges.

One woman they interviewed, who had just graduated from the University of Sonora, had worked up the courage to tell her teacher that her writing skills in Spanish were not great. The teacher, who happened to be bilingual, told her she could write the assigned essay in English. Some other students overheard, and in the end, about half the class received permission to write their essay in English, Ochoa says.

Besides academic struggles, interviewees complained of being bullied and taunted for the way they speak Spanish and also that school administrators tell them there is no room for them to enroll.

The Seminario Niñez Migrante has also found that getting enrolled in school is one of the biggest challenges these children face along with invisibility in the classroom from not being able to confidently speak and write in Spanish.

The Seminario has helped more than a dozen children and teens from ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ enroll in elementary and middle schools in Sonora after schools said they wouldn’t admit them either because there wasn’t room or the families didn’t have the right paperwork, which in some cases they would only have if their children were born in Mexico.

They’ve also helped a dozen children from Central America who are asking for refuge to stay in Sonora and who were not immediately admitted into school.

Many migrants who are waiting, many times for months or longer, in border towns for a chance to seek asylum in the U.S. say they have trouble enrolling their children in school because they lack the paperwork the schools ask for. This is a demographic that Ciria, with the Seminario, says they are also trying to help have access to proper education.

Access to education for all children is protected in the Mexican constitution, state law in Sonora and standards outlined by the Secretary of Public Education in Mexico, which says that a lack of documentation can’t hinder a child’s ability to enroll in school, , Ciria says, adding that little is done to comply with those laws and standards.

“With the law in hand, we go to the schools and tell the directors, this child has a right to go to school,� she said. “Here, we’ve established that everyone has the right to go to school independent of their nationality.�

What is being done

As the existing laws have been insufficient to guarantee access to school for all children in Mexico, The Seminario is also involved in writing a new initiative, which passed through the Education Commission and is awaiting approval from the full legislative body in Sonora, Ciria says.

The initiative would guarantee the right to education for all returning migrant children and adolescents in the state of Sonora, regardless of where they were born, as well as children waiting in Sonora to seek refuge or asylum. And it would require the Secretary of Education and Culture of the state of Sonora to issue regulations that ensure those children have access to school.

In the UA study, O’Leary and her colleagues will analyze the data they’re collecting about students’ and parents’ experiences and will put together a best practices guide for students returning to Mexico from ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. In the fall they’ll meet with Mexican officials at the state and federal levels to create a plan to more widely distribute the guidelines they create.

While O’Leary hopes her work will help these families, it doesn’t fix what she sees as the larger problem.

A lot of the students she’s interviewed were high achieving students in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ schools before returning to Mexico — class presidents, straight A students and students who earned prestigious scholarships that they then couldn’t access due to their immigration status.

“Can you imagine how wonderful it would be, if instead of throwing them out, we let them come to the university, offer them in-state tuition, and if possible, have state-level financial aid?� she said. “These are students who are ready to work, and they’re becoming educated and they want to contribute to society. It’s our loss, Mexico’s gain in many ways.�