As federal immigration enforcement activity becomes an increasingly visible fixture in Central Florida, student activists in Orlando are organizing a new project to inform immigrant students in Orange County’s public schools of their rights if confronted by a federal enforcement agent.
Under the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, and a Supreme Court ruling that has given U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents the green light to racially profile anyone they believe could be in the country illegally, advocates say a sense of fear has permeated immigrant communities in Orlando, including among non-white U.S. citizens.
“We saw a need right there for advocacy for undocumented students, or students who may be immigrants or come from immigrant backgrounds, and just a need for them to know their rights and feel empowered in schools,” said Melanie Veras, a 21-year-old political science major at the University of Central Florida who’s leading efforts to organize a new “know your rights” initiative for students.
Veras has been organizing the project with Youth Action Fund, a Florida-based, Gen Z-led nonprofit organization, through its affiliated campaign Girls in Law. Youth Action Fund, founded in 2023, has also been on the forefront of organizing against book-banning efforts and attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.
The goal of this new project — dubbed “Red 4 Rights” — is to print “know your rights” cards and pass them out in Orange County Public Schools, offering basic information about what students and their families are legally required to do if confronted by federal immigration enforcement agents. The plan, if approved by school district leaders, is to initially get these cards into Title 1 high schools that have predominantly Hispanic populations.
Advocates told Orlando Weekly that they’re planning to present the idea to the Orange County School Board on Feb. 10 and say they have already been in touch with Orange County Public Schools chief academic officer Dr. Tashanda Brown to discuss the idea.
Orlando Weekly was unable to confirm Brown’s communication with Girls in Law about this initiative ahead of publication. The district, however, recently cited federal immigration enforcement and fear among immigrant families in the school district as a contributing factor to a significant decline this fall in student enrollment.
“I don’t know where the kids are learning. I don’t know if they’re safe. None of that is known to us. We don’t know where they are, and so it’s really heartbreaking,” Orange County school board member Angie Gallo told the Orlando Sentinel.
The know-your-rights cards created by Veras and other student advocates display basic rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, printed in English on the front and in Spanish on the back. This includes the right to not open your front door for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who don’t have a warrant signed by a judge, and the right to remain silent under the same circumstances.
A memo dating back to May from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, recently leaked to the Associated Press by a U.S. Congressman and whistleblowers, claims that ICE agents can force entry into homes for immigration-related arrests without a judicial warrant, provided they have a more narrow administrative final order of removal. Legal advocates, however, say procedures outlined in the memo “collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities,” according to the Associated Press, which broke news of the leak.
Former acting ICE director John Sandweg, who served under the Obama administration, confirmed to PBS News Hour that this was not part of their protocol during his time with the federal agency roughly a decade ago. “It was a widely held belief and a firm legal opinion of the department that you cannot forcibly enter a residence without a judicial warrant,” he said.
The memo hadn’t been widely shared within the federal agency, according to the AP, but it had been used to train new ICE officers recruited under the Trump administration to help carry out the president’s mass detention and deportation agenda.
As well, a Jan. 14, 2026, decision by the Supreme Court that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for law enforcement officers to enter a house without a warrant, if officers have an “objectively reasonable” basis to believe that an occupant is “seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Many observers of current ICE tactics fear that this opens up a pretext for intrusion with a high liability of abuse.
For Veras, a first-generation immigrant who’s studying to become an attorney, the know-your-rights campaign in Orange County hits home. Both her parents are immigrants, but her mother is undocumented and currently working on securing U.S. citizenship.
The process of doing so through the federally approved, legal pathways available to U.S. immigrants can take years, even decades, depending on where you’re coming from and other factors. “It’s been her goal forever,” Veras said, “but I think right now it’s mostly her goal because of the fear and uncertainty of what may happen now under this administration.”
President Donald Trump, ahead of his inauguration, made very clear his intentions of pursuing the “largest deportation operation in American history” on day one of his presidency, and has unleashed a $100 million recruitment strategy for federal enforcement agents to make it happen.
Although administration officials initially claimed they would focus their efforts on going after undocumented immigrants who had committed heinous crimes, this hasn’t borne out in practice. In addition to jailing people with no criminal record, the feds have also moved to end programs for non-citizens with temporary protected status who are living and working in the country lawfully.
Emboldened by white nationalist sympathizers like U.S. Department of Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller, federal ICE agents have also conducted raids at sensitive locations like churches and schools — deterring attendance by immigrant students and families.
“Preliminary reports indicate our immigrant student population has declined by about 3,000,” said Orange County Public Schools deputy superintendent Dr. Michael Armbruster during a public school board meeting last August. That’s about half of the total 6,600 students the school district reported losing at the beginning of the school year, Central Florida Public Media reported.
Related Stories
Fear of immigration arrests near schools in Florida is reducing enrollment, officials say
Orange County Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the country, serves over 200,000 students at 210 schools, according to its website, although the district is considering closing seven of those due to the declining enrollment.
Other school leaders across the country have similarly reported dips in student attendance due to fears related to Trump’s immigration policy. About 70 percent of U.S. high school principals shared in a recent survey that students from immigrant families “have expressed concerns about their well-being or the well-being of their families due to policies or political rhetoric related to immigrants.”
Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association — a labor union representing roughly 13,600 teachers and school staff — told Orlando Weekly that he was proud to see students like Veras step up to support the community.
“Educators see every day how fear and uncertainty can impact students’ ability to learn and feel safe at school. Efforts that help students and families better understand their rights and access reliable information align with our shared commitment to student well-being,” McCracken said in a text message. “It’s encouraging to see students using their voices to look out for one another.”
Veras told the Weekly that she and other advocates have already begun distributing their Red 4 Rights cards at UCF and to high-school students in Apopka, and have received positive feedback.
“Already, even with the few distributions that we’ve done, we’ve just seen so much improvement in their confidence, in their education, and it has sparked so much civic literacy,” she said. “It sparks them to want to learn more about government or civics, and it just opens up a broader conversation and allows students to really be engaged in classrooms and feel protected in classrooms.”
You can follow Girls in Law’s Red 4 Rights campaign on Instagram and sign a petition demonstrating support for the initiative for Orange County Public Schools here.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
