At a sparsely attended meeting last year, the board of education for the Saugus district in Massachusetts approved a new policy that it said was to streamline the process of enrolling students in schools.
But critics say the new rules — including requiring proof of legal residency and imposing “civil and criminal penalties” for violators — had another goal: to exclude immigrants from the small school district outside Boston.
The debate over whether to accept immigrant children in American schools extends far beyond the Boston suburbs. Activists fear the issue will become more prominent if Donald Trump ascends to the presidency for a second time.
Conservative politicians in states including Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee are questioning whether immigrants without legal residency have a right to a public education, raising the possibility of lawsuits against another established Supreme Court decision.
For decades, children of families living in the country illegally have had the right to attend private schools, based on a Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe. In a 5-4 decision, the court determined that it would be unconstitutional to deny a child an education based on his or her immigration status.
New rules in the Saugus district stipulate that new students must show their immigration documents and say that children must be “legal residents whose true residence is in Saugus,” where the proportion of children learning English has nearly tripled to 31 % in the last decade. Families must also complete a census form, sign a residency declaration, and show employment and identity documents.
Civil rights lawyers say the requirements are overly burdensome and violate federal law by disproportionately harming children from immigrant families, who may not have the required documents, regardless of whether they are living in the country legally.
Saugus committee chairman Vincent Serino said during the meeting that the idea is only to “improve” existing residency rules and not deny services to immigrants.
But one Nicaraguan woman said it took her six months to register her 8-year-old son because of document requirements. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation for her son, said the town refused to accept her lease and her complaints to the school were ignored.
Attempts to undermine Plyler v. Doe must be taken seriously, immigration experts warn, pointing to the willingness of the US Supreme Court, currently dominated by conservative judges, to overturn historical legal precedents such as the right to abortion and affirmative action.
Trump, a Republican, has made immigration one of his main campaign issues, promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. He calls immigrants “animals” and “murderers” and says immigrant children bring diseases into the classrooms. A photo displayed at a recent Trump rally shows a crowded school classroom with the caption “Open Border = Crowded Classrooms.”
There is no doubt that the increase in the immigrant population has stretched school resources in many communities, contributing to full classrooms and forcing teachers to adapt to large numbers of Spanish-speaking students.
But until recent times, the idea of denying a child an education was considered “too right-wing and too radical,” said Tom K. Wong, director of the Center for Migration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. “But now we are in a political environment where previously extremist policies are now part of common discourse.”
The conservative Heritage Foundation recently urged states to pass laws requiring schools to charge tuition to families living in the country illegally. Doing so, he asserted in a document, will provoke litigation that will likely “lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its misguided Plyler v. “Doe.”
Over the summer, Oklahoma Education Director Ryan Walters announced that his agency will provide guidance to its districts on gathering information about “the costs and burden” of illegal immigration on districts.
“The federal government has failed in its mission to secure the border. Our schools are suffering the consequences of this,” said Walters.
Some school districts have resisted, saying they will not be reviewing students’ immigration status.
“Federal law is quite clear on this issue: It prohibits districts from asking students or their families about their immigration status or requiring them to provide citizenship documents,” said Chris Payne, a spokesman for the school district in Tulsa, repeating the interpretation. common to the Supreme Court ruling.
In Tennessee, a school reform proposal by Republican Gov. Bill Lee led to a debate over whether immigrant children should be excluded. Some conservative members of the Legislature supported the idea, but others feared the exclusion would spark lawsuits. Lee ultimately abandoned his plan after several elements failed to gain support.
The board of education in Saugus, Massachusetts, approved its admissions policy at a meeting in August 2023, two days after Democratic Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency due to the immigration crisis. At the time, Healey said nearly 5,600 families — many of them immigrants from Haiti or Venezuela — are living in state shelters, an increase from the 3,100 families registered the previous year.
Serino, the head of the education committee, said the group began considering an update to its requirements more than a year before migrants became a problem for the state. He said the new rules require documents such as an affidavit signed by a landlord or a property tax return, “things that everyone has.”
“We have not harmed anyone and no one has come to complain: no migrant, no parent,” said Serino.
Legal activists, however, say the policy has been an obstacle for at least two immigrant families trying to enroll their children in Saugus schools. Two groups — Lawyers For Civil Rights and Massachusetts Advocates for Children — say they had to intervene so the children could be registered.
“The policy itself is illegal,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights. “Schools should be welcoming (all) children who are in the district and should be educating them.”
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in 2022 that Plyler vs. Doe should be subject to a legal challenge and that the federal government should pay for the education of students who are not legal residents. It drew criticism from pro-immigrant activists and the White House. The following year, Republican lawmakers in Texas tried unsuccessfully to introduce proposals to prevent noncitizen children from enrolling in public schools.
In June, the idea was incorporated into the platform of the Texas Republican Party.
That party’s priorities in the upcoming legislative session include “an end to all subsidies and public services, including in-state college tuition and public school enrollment, for illegal immigrants, except in cases of medical emergencies.”
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