Immigrant truancy in America: "No one wants to talk about it"

It’s the usual lecture from this judge and hundreds of judges across the country as the children of immigrant families – some documented and others not – are dragged into court for chronic absence. The reasons are as varied as the places they come from. Some are from countries where a teenager doesn’t normally attend school. Some are caught up in gang activity or fear falling prey to it at school. Some families – particularly in cities where police are working with immigration authorities – skip school when Immigration and Customs Enforcement is snooping around, or don’t even enroll their teenagers for fear they will be found out and sent back to where they came from.

But in many cases teenagers are simply teenagers behaving badly.

“These parents come here for a better life, but sometimes the kids don’t give a shit,” said David Ishibashi, executive director of the Youth Success Network, which works with chronically absent children in New Jersey. “These people risk their lives to come here.” But in many cases, he added, the problems immigrant teens face – poverty, trauma, illness and underperforming schools — run much deeper than a bad attitude.