Caught between extreme heat and ICE: the dangers of returning to school for Latino children in Arizona

Each year the heat gets more extreme in Tucson, Arizona. By 9.00 am Jennifer Cárdenas’s children can no longer play out in the yard, and to visit her mother‑in‑law — a short walk she could once make — she now has to drive. When their home air conditioning breaks down, temperatures reach such high and dangerous levels that they have to leave. Keeping the three‑bedroom house cool costs her hundreds of dollars in electricity. The last bill was $450. “For many families here in Arizona it’s a tough choice: pay that bill or pay for food or gas. We need to pay it. With little kids there’s no option but to run the air,” she says.

Jennifer Cárdenas works as a psychologist in the Tucson school district. In a few days her four‑year‑old twins will start pre‑K and she worries about how the school year will begin in these temperatures. In Tucson temperatures typically top 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celsius) for a little more than 60 days a year, according to the National Weather Service. In August, the month that Arizona schools open, temperatures usually range from 104°F to 113°F (40°C to 45°C). When that has happened in past years, she recalls, schools have had to cut recess time for children and there have been crisis moments when school bus air conditioners failed. “It’s dangerous for the kids,” Cárdenas says on a call.

In hot classrooms, students face greater risks of headaches, fatigue and heatstroke, and their test performance worsens. In younger children it can also reduce attention span, delay language acquisition and trigger asthma attacks.

Nine out of 10 Americans report that the heat is changing their lives in at least one way — outdoor time, work, electric bills, vacations, sleep — according to a survey published last week by the Associated Press‑NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

In Arizona, one of the states with the highest temperatures, 4,300 people died from causes linked to extreme heat between 2013 and 2024; about 2,000 of them were Latino. In Pima County, where Tucson is located, there were 117 heat‑related deaths in 2025 and emergency‑room visits for heat rose 13%, from 787 in 2024 to 893 in 2025.

Heat deaths often occur in mobile home parks, occupied by low‑income families who are mostly Latino. “These families face the highest exposure to extreme heat and have fewer resources to escape it,” says activist Linda Stone. She is part of the group Mamás Con Poder, which runs workshops for Latina mothers in Tucson on how to protect families from extreme heat and where to find help.

In her community many have lost the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helped about 6.2 million families nationwide pay their electricity and gas bills, including cooling assistance in summer. In April 2025, the administration of Donald Trump eliminated the program and fired the 23 federal employees who administered it, part of a wider wave of layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Without that assistance, the lowest‑income families risk service cutoffs and heat‑related emergencies while accumulating debt. At the same time, the federal government has made cuts to the Solar for All program aimed at expanding access to solar energy for low‑income communities.

For Latino families, paying for electricity is a heavier burden than for the average white family: it represents 3.5% of their income, compared with 2.8% for white households. “Many families will not be able to pay their bills without the support of this program because things are already expensive, the cost of living is high. That’s what we’re hearing from mothers,” Stone says.

ICE can patrol the school

The fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration‑enforcement operations adds to concerns about the start of the school year.

“We’re hearing stories of mothers thinking about not sending their children to school for fear they could be separated from them. We’re also hearing about children going with neighbors who are helping so their mothers don’t have to come near the school,” Stone says.

President Trump eliminated the policy that protected schools, churches and hospitals from immigration enforcement on the same day he took office. Since then, ICE agents have had discretionary and effectively unlimited authority to operate in those places.

In the previous school year there were incidents in which ICE agents prowled schools in Arizona and detained at least two mothers who were taken to detention centers. “Now the fear is greater because sudden detentions like that have also increased. It’s an issue that causes anxiety and fear in children. These are very difficult moments to start school,” the activist says.

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