Undocumented Children: Unwanted, Say Manassas, Virginia, Officials

MANASSAS, VirginiaRebecca Apple's Latino students at Osbourn High School call her "Miss Manzana," the Spanish word for "apple." A floating teacher last year, Apple would pile her nine English-Spanish dictionaries and other supplies into a cart and travel down halls thronged with students.

She's one of hundreds of public school teachers in Manassas, in Prince William County outside Washington, D.C., who've struggled to adjust to the arrival of scores of new Hispanic students; a fresh onslaught is expected when school opens in a few weeks' time. Last year, Apple's class size for her beginner English for Speakers of Other Languages course grew so quickly that she was receiving one or two new immigrant students every day for a month.

Matilde Rosa Jimenez taught as many as 37 kids in her eighth-grade English class at Metz Middle School, from gifted students to kids struggling with basic reading comprehension to immigrants who spoke little or no English. Some of her students had trouble reading in their native language. And in one county public elementary school, 60 different languages are spoken.

Educating immigrant children has tested the capacity of the county's schools in other ways as well. Hundreds of trailers have been turned into makeshift classrooms to handle the overflow.

With 50,000 unaccompanied children flooding into the United States this summer, many towns and cities are expecting apprehended minors to be moved to their communities, at least temporarily. The national reaction has run the gamut from cautious willingness to open hostility. In the middle-class suburbs of Washington, D.C., where waves of immigrants have long been a source of cultural tension, the potential for a new influx has sparked angry debate and calls for immediate deportations.

Manassas has a main street that is traditional Americana, with red brick buildings and hanging flower baskets. But Hispanic influence in the city is growing, and many services and businesses cater to Spanish speakers. According to predictions from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, a think tank at the University of Virginia, the county's Hispanic population will rise nearly 50 percent, from 81,460 in 2010 to 118,748 in 2020. (At the start of 2013, its total population was estimated at 431,000.)

In Manassas, the Hispanic community has doubled within the last decade and now makes up a third of the population. The small city, with a population of around 28,000, has become a battleground just as surely as it was during the Civil War.

Celia Maria Llanes gives bottles of milk to her daughters and the children she babysits in her Manassas home.

Photograph by Sarah L. Voisin, The Washington Post/Getty

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Undocumented Children: Unwanted, Say Manassas, Virginia, Officials