This article presents findings of a qualitative study about students' language ideologies in a transitional bilingual education (TBE) programme located in the US-Mexico border. Although officially regarded as 'TBE', results show that both ideologies and practices resemble an English monolingual form of education where only the English language is valued and used for instruction. This qualitative study investigates the experiences of 4th grade EBs in this setting in which students appropriated monoglossic language ideologies and discourses of transition displayed by teachers and school district policies. However, students also displayed their agency when they actively sought spaces within and outside the school context to access their entire linguistic repertoire to communicate with friends and family. The complexity of students' internalised ideologies of language and their performed ideologies became visible through observations and interviews conducted in this study.