Spectrum News NY1 | President Donald Trump has promised mass deportations and has abandoned policies that limited U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions at sensitive locations like schools.

Advocates and school communities say that’s already having a chilling effect on school attendance for recently arrived students.

Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, who leads the Immigrant Students Rights Project at Advocates for Children, says they’ve not seen any incidents of ICE attempting to enter schools but they have seen the chilling effect.

“We also heard from the New York City Public Schools that attendance did go down a little bit the week of the inauguration, and last week as well. And that aligns with what we’re seeing with the types of questions that we’re getting from our clients,” she said.

The education department criticized comparisons of attendance data week over week, which were made at a hearing of the state Legislature Tuesday. The department instead pointed to data showing January’s attendance is down just 1.5% compared to the January prior.

But Trump did not take office until 20 days into the month.