Texas public schools had 14,279 fewer students in the state’s immigrant-student reporting category in the October 2025 snapshot than in October 2024, according to the Texas Education Agency (TEA). That is a 7.4% decline from the earlier count. It does not establish that 14,279 children were deported, disappeared, or left Texas: the figures are two annual snapshots, not a record tracking each student or explaining what happened to them.
What the TEA numbers show
TEA’s June 2026 report lists 193,831 students in the immigrant category for 2024-25 and 179,552 for 2025-26. Subtracting the later count from the earlier one gives 14,279 fewer students, or about 7.4% of the 2024-25 count. These are statewide public-school enrollment figures from the October snapshots.
The Texas Tribune described the drop as more than 14,200 students, or 7%, but its article gives 179,423 as the 2025-26 count—129 fewer than the total in TEA’s table. The figures differ; the 14,279 change and 7.4% calculation here use TEA’s primary table.
Who is included in Texas’s immigrant-student category?
TEA’s category covers students ages 3 through 21 who were not born in a U.S. state, Puerto Rico, or the District of Columbia, and who have not attended school in the United States for more than three full academic years. Citizenship is not part of the definition. Districts do not ask students for their immigration or citizenship status to identify this category, according to the Texas Tribune.
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This is a narrow education-program reporting category—not a count of all immigrant children, and not a count of undocumented students. For example, an undocumented student who has attended school in Texas for more than three full academic years would not necessarily be included.
Why a lower snapshot count does not reveal where students went
TEA defines enrollment in its 2025-26 report as the number registered on the last Friday in October, the report’s snapshot date. Comparing those dates shows how many students met the category definition at each point; it does not follow the same children between snapshots.
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The difference alone cannot determine whether a student moved elsewhere in Texas, moved to another state or country, enrolled in a different kind of school, stopped attending, or no longer met the category’s criteria. It also does not establish that every student counted in the earlier snapshot left the Texas public-school system.
TEA’s annual leaver data are a separate measure: they cover Grade 7–12 students districts report as leaving Texas public schools during a school year, grouped under withdrawal codes. They are not a direct explanation for the change between these October snapshots.
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What is known—and not known—about possible causes
The Texas Tribune reported that the specific cause of the statewide decline is unclear. It described increased immigration enforcement and the rescission of a prior restriction on enforcement in protected areas, including schools, as context. Administrators in Austin and Houston attributed much of their districts’ overall enrollment losses to deportations or fear of enforcement, based on family accounts. Those local explanations are important, but they are not a statewide estimate of why the immigrant-category count fell.
Austin ISD Superintendent Matias Segura told the Tribune: “We knew that some of the immigration changes at the federal level were going to continue to have impacts in our schools, and they are,” describing students leaving in areas with enforcement activity. ImmSchools senior director of programs and impact Esmeralda Alday said, “You have families that don’t want to send their kids to school,” according to the same report. These are attributed accounts, not a count of the students affected statewide.
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The Department of Homeland Security disputed the article’s framing. As quoted by the Tribune, DHS said ICE does not target schools and that people living legally in the United States who are not breaking other laws have “nothing to fear”; it called the article’s framing a “false narrative.” These statements likewise do not establish what caused the enrollment change.
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TEA also reported that total statewide public-school enrollment fell by 76,613 students, or 1.4%, to 5,467,642 in 2025-26. The Texas Tribune reported that Hispanic and emergent bilingual students accounted for most of the overall statewide loss, and cited Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab director Marguerite Roza on immigration having offset declining birth rates for some districts in earlier years.
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Those figures describe different, potentially overlapping populations. Total enrollment, Hispanic students, emergent bilingual students, and students in TEA’s immigrant category are not interchangeable measures. The broader decline gives context, but it does not explain the category’s change or identify individual students’ destinations.
Does “the true number is likely higher” have a measured basis?
The phrase needs a definition. TEA’s count is not designed to include every immigrant child enrolled in Texas public schools; it is limited by age, birthplace, and time attending U.S. schools. In that sense, the number of all immigrant students could be larger than the category count, but the cited sources do not establish a broader statewide total or show that the decline in that broader population was higher than 14,279.
There is no published statewide causal estimate in the cited reporting that identifies how many students left because of deportation or fear, or what happened to each student missing from the later category count. Federal claims concerning unaccompanied migrant children who did not receive court notices or missed hearings concern a different population and do not show that Texas public-school students are missing.
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