Attendance records show that absences among Latino students in the Kingston City School District have risen by nearly 10 percent amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Meanwhile, school officials blamed a clerical error and spring break for the district’s failure to produce the records in compliance with a timeline set by state Freedom of Information law.

The numbers obtained by Kingston Wire in response to a March 4 Freedom of Information Act request cover the first three months of 2025 and the same period in 2024. They show that overall absences rose slightly from 29,689 in 2024 to 29,744 during the same period this year.

But the data shows absences rose disproportionately among Latino students, who make up about a quarter of the district’s student body. During the first three months of 2024 there were 9,015 absences by Latino students. During the same period this year the number rose by nearly 10 percent to 9,991. The majority of Kingston’s immigrant population is made up of natives of Mexico and Central America. It is not known what proportion of KCSD students are immigrants or children of immigrants or how many are from families with undocumented members.

The data tracks with reports from immigrant rights advocates who say that Trump’s immigration crackdown — which includes the retraction of longstanding guidelines barring enforcement actions at schools and churches — has caused major disruption in the Latino community centered around Midtown Kingston. Reports include significant declines in attendance at Spanish-language churches, slowdowns at businesses catering to the immigrant community and a reluctance among some to leave the house for anything besides essential needs.

The disruption is particularly acute on days when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are active in the city, as happened on two occasions in March when agents visited multiple homes and businesses in Midtown and detained at least three people. In other cases, rumors of ICE presence on social media are enough to keep immigrants behind closed doors.

The KCSD released the attendance data on April 24, two weeks after an April 11 deadline to respond to Kingston Wire’s FOIL request which sought numbers from February 2024 and 2025 in addition to any communications from district headquarters to staff regarding immigration enforcement. The response came moments after Kingston Wire filed an appeal to what an attorney from the state Committee on Open Government deemed a “constructive denial” of the request for public records. In an email accompanying the data, district Records Access Officer Karen Seery said that the date to fulfill the FOIL request had been entered incorrectly while the district’s spring break had prevented district staff from receiving follow-up emails on the matter. Seery added that a search by district IT staff did not turn up any communications to staff regarding immigration enforcement.