The state education board passed new rules Tuesday requiring families to show proof of U.S. citizenship when enrolling children in public schools in Oklahoma.
The governor and the legislature would need to approve the proposed regulation, which would mandate that school districts keep track of the number of children who are unable to confirm their immigrant status and submit those numbers to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
At the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, state superintendent Ryan Walters stated that our law regarding illegal immigration accounting is simply to account for the number of pupils who are illegal immigrants in our schools.
Dozens of Oklahoma City kids demonstrated outside the building against Walters’ immigration policies and demanded that deportation officials not be allowed on school grounds.
When Walters announced last year that he planned to urge school districts to assist his office in calculating the impact of illegal immigration on the public education system, he encountered opposition. Walters established his name in office by focusing on culture war topics and attracting right-wing influencers into state government.
A dozen districts informed NBC News in August that they would not verify their students’ immigration status, with many stating that they did not want to deter foreign-born families from enrolling their children in school or break Supreme Court precedent.
During the Biden administration, Oklahoma spent $474 million to educate children of unauthorized immigrants, Walters said Tuesday. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a right-wing nonprofit organization formed by the late activist John Tanton, who opposed non-white migration to the United States and advocated eugenics, based their projection on 2020 census statistics.
Walters stated during the state board meeting that you must have the information about where your children are coming from. We will ensure that this information reaches President Trump and his administration.
Due to Walters’ declaration that he would permit Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pick up children from public schools for deportation, Melissa Lujan, an immigrant rights lawyer in Oklahoma City, reported that she has received at least six calls this week from clients inquiring about the documentation they must present at their children’s schools. These clients mistakenly believe that the rules are already in place.
“They’re going crazy,” Lujan remarked.
In Plyler v. Doe, decided in 1982, the Supreme Court found that the government could not bar children of unauthorized immigrants from attending public schools. Despite the 5-4 result, the dissenting opinion did not support keeping children of unauthorized immigrants out of public schools.
Federal courts invalidated a similar Alabama law that collected schoolchildren’s immigration status ten years ago.
Kit Johnson, a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma who focuses on immigration law, believes that when Walters’ policies are eventually contested in court, they will suffer a similar fate.
According to Johnson, this one will be ruled unlawful. Even if Walters says, “Oh, we’re just collecting data,” it is still forbidden if it will prevent children from having equal access to education.
According to Tamya Cox-Tour, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, the organization is thinking of filing a lawsuit to overturn the regulations if the governor and legislature adopt them, but that won’t provide immigrant families much solace in the short term.
“We think the goal is to scare students away from school because just the threat of this causes harm,” she said.
According to a spokeswoman for his office on Tuesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentry Drummond feels it is legal to ask for such verification of a child’s immigration status because the rule states that not providing the information does not prevent enrollment.
Requests for comment on the immigration regulations were not answered by Republican legislative leaders or Governor Kevin Stitt.