Families entering children into the Oklahoma public schools will have to provide evidence of their US citizenship under the new rules approved by the State Education Board on Tuesday.
Proposed PANWhich should be approved by the governor and the legislature, the school districts will need to detect the number of students who cannot confirm their immigration status and these data to the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Will report.
“Our rule is only around the illegal immigration accounting. At a Tuesday meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education, State Superintendent Ryan Walters said how many students of illegal immigrants are in our schools.
Outside the building in Oklahoma City, dozens of students Protested Walters’ immigration policies and exile agents were called to keep them away from the school campus.
Walters-who gained fame to focus on culture war issues and invite the right-wing influence to the state government-resisted last year. Education system.
A dozen districts told NBC News in August that they would not examine the status of their students’ immigration, many people would be cited for the Supreme Court’s desire not to violate the ideology, nor Foreign -born families will be prevented from enrolling children in school.
Walters said Tuesday that Oklahoma spent $ 474 million to educate non -documentary immigrants under the Biden administration. This is from the Federation for American Immigration Reform analysis. Promoted Ujjinx And Opposite Non -white migration in the US – and was Based on An estimated group did Using Census data from 2020.
“You have to keep the data where your children are coming from,” Walters said at a state board meeting. “We will make sure that President Trump and his administration have this information.”
Melissa Lojan, a lawyer for immigrants in Oklahoma City, said she received at least six calls from clients this week asking what documents they need to show in their children’s schools. Under the wrong assumption that the rules are already in place, and in light. Walters’ statement that he would allow the implementation of immigration and customs to collect children From public schools for exile.
Lojan said, “They are coming out.
In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in the Plamer vs Duo that the government Non -documentary migrants cannot stop children By studying in public school. The vote was 5-4, but there was disagreement Not Lawyer for excluding non -documentary immigrants from public schools.
A decade ago, federal courts Hit the bottom A similar albama law To collect Immigration status for schoolchildren.
Oklahoma law professor, Kit Johnson, who specializes in immigration law, has predicted that the rules presented by Walters will face the same kind of fate when they are essentially challenged in court.
Johnson said, “This will be found an unconstitutional.” Even with Walters, ‘Oh, we are just collecting data’ – if children are about to get equal access to education , It is not allowed. ”
Tamia Cox Tory, Executive Director of Oklahoma ACLU, said that if the governor and the legislature approved them, the group is considering legal action to stop the rules, but this has led to the families of the immigrants in the near term. There is more relief.
“Only the risk of it has been damaged, and we think it intends – to scare students from going to school,” he said.
Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentry Drumand “believes that applying such documents is related to the status of a child’s immigration”, because in this principle it is conditioned that “failure to produce content does not stop entry “
Government Kevin Stat and Republican legislators did not respond to requests for commenting on immigration rules.
