Oklahoma education leaders approved a plan on Tuesday to request proof of citizenship or immigration status from families when they enroll their children in public schools.
The new rule would not prevent students who are not citizens or legal immigrants from enrolling, a practice that was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1982. But it would require districts to track and report the number of students whose families have not provided proof of citizenship or legal status.
The rule was a remarkable departure from the noncooperative approach that many large school districts across the nation have taken in response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which are expected to cause waves of deportations and could lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to visit schools. It could also prompt swift legal challenges across the state.
Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of schools and a firebrand Republican who supported the new rule, said it aimed to provide the White House with the information needed to enforce its immigration policies in Oklahoma.
Mr. Walters, who clashed with the Biden administration over immigration, has claimed that schools across the state have been “crippled by the flood of illegal immigrants,” and said that “we will do everything possible to help put Oklahoma students first.”
He has announced his intention to support immigration raids in schools “to ensure that deported parents are reconnected with their children and keep families together.”
“We’re going to work with the Trump administration in any way they see fit,” Mr. Walters said in a recent television interview. “We will not allow schools to be sanctuary schools anymore.”
The move in Oklahoma comes as some educators and principals in American school districts are feeling anxious over immigration enforcement. In Fort Worth, for example, the school system began an investigation into social media posts apparently made by a substitute teacher who called for ICE agents to come to the high school where he worked.
In Chicago, reports of immigration agents appearing at the entrance of a public school set off widespread fear last week, but they were later proved false.
The plan in Oklahoma — approved unanimously by the six-member Oklahoma State Board of Education — will now move to the state legislature and the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, for review.
The text of the rule change asserts that the policy would help “assess statewide and local educational needs,” including English as a Second language teachers and tutoring programs.
That rationale has not sat well with many teachers, civil liberties organizations and immigration groups across Oklahoma, who convened protests over the proposed rule outside the state education headquarters in the lead-up to the vote on Tuesday.
Nicholas Espíritu, deputy legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement that the requirement would violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“All children have a constitutional right to equal access to education, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status,” Mr. Espíritu said. “Requiring school districts to collect information about immigration status illegally chills access to this opportunity, interfering with their ability to focus on their core mission.”
He pointed to a similar move in 2011 that made Alabama the first state in the nation to require its public schools to check the immigration status of students. The rule was later overturned after a federal lawsuit, but it still led to “markedly higher rates of absenteeism for Latino school children,” according to the American Immigration Council.
It was unclear whether all of Oklahoma’s more than 500 school districts would comply with the rule. Many districts have refused to follow a mandate from Mr. Walters last year that they teach the Bible across grade levels and subjects.
Unlike the Bible directive, though, the enrollment rule would carry the weight of the law.
Still, Jamie C. Polk, the superintendent of schools in Oklahoma City, said in a letter last month, after the proposal was announced, that her district “does not, nor do we have plans to, collect the immigration status of our students or their families.”
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