Immigrant children face a new form of bullying: the Trump administration and their allies are trying to scare them from school.
One of the first actions of the Trump National Security Department was Discard a nucleus restriction On the application of immigration. For decades, democratic and republican administrations have complied with policies, formalized in Memorandas, which limit the application of the immigration law in places called in a sensitive way: churches, hospitals, nurseries and schools. But the day after the inauguration, the new administration left those protections against raids and arrests.
Now the legislators of California are fortifying the bastions of the State against the application of immigration and customs and the tactics of the administration. California already forbidden Public schools for compilation of immigration information about students and families, and in December, state legislators inserted Invoices In addition, it requires that schools and houses reject ICE's consent to enter without a court order. Another billEntted at the end of January, I would use the emergency notification systems of schools to alert students and parents about the presence of immigration officers.
State laws can slow the ice, but cannot cancel federal law. Even if the entrance is denied, ICE could wait in school courtyards or make raids in football games. According estimates From the Migration Policy Institute, around 5 million children in the United States live with at least one undocumented father, which can transform school falls into deportation launch plates. (I don't want to say that Trump's administration could, much less should, gather the hundreds of billions of dollars required for large -scale immigration arrests).
Finishing the “sensitive locations” policy has nothing to do with the need. When he is pressed on the wisdom of ice terrorist schoolchildren, vice president JD Vance He invoked Boogeyman of a “violent murderer in a school.” But the previous policy already allowed ICE to arrest in schools and other emergency places, or when their officers had no other alternative.
So what is the point? For the most part, make a striking sample of hardness and sow fear among immigrants. Surely part of the objective is self -sports.
Some state and local jurisdictions were ahead of national security when it comes to intimidation. This fall, the Sougus school district, Massachusetts, began demanding Proof that new students were legal residents. The Oklahoma State Education Board has just voted require that parents and legal guardians “provide evidence of their citizenship when they enrolled children at school.” These requirements may sound a bell for Californians: similar surveillance and limitations in immigrants were central to PROPOSITION 187the measure of the 1994 electoral ballot driven by the Republicans that often accredited with disappearance of the Republican Party in the State.
PROPOSITION 187 He did not stand in judicial scrutiny. Nor a similar law in Alabama in 2012. Both were frustrated by Plyler vs. DOE, a case of the 1982 Supreme Court that establishes the constitutional right of equal access to public education, regardless of immigration status.
But the current court has already demonstrated its willingness to reverse the long -standing precedent, even for FLYING ROE VS. Wade. Then he Conservative Heritage Foundation is pressing so that other states and districts follow the example of Oklahoma and Saugus, hoping that the Supreme Court Reconsider Plyler.
The Superintendent of the Oklahoma School, Ryan Walters, as many, frames his attacks against immigrant children and “sanctuary schools” as economic. Demanded refund of the federal government to educate immigrant children.
Plyler's decision did not buy such logic. In that case, Texas argued that their resources stretched too thin due to immigrant schoolchildren. But the court pointed out that unauthorized immigrants were “contributing their work to the local economy and the money of taxes to the State.” And, he added, the savings that Texas sought were “totally insubstantial in the light of the costs involved for these children, the state and the nation” to create “a subclass of illiterate within our limits.”
Plyler's possession is applied today as he did 40 years ago, but the courts are not the only institutions that can defend students. California legislators must approve legislation to even protect schools against ice intrusion. Local schools can also help directly protect your communities. The Los Angeles Unified School District has a mandatory plan teacher training, and will provide “know your rights” cards to parents. While these efforts cannot completely protect against arrests at the school site, school staff can give tools to defend themselves and their communities.
Educational leaders must also speak. The former president of California, Tani Cantil-Sakuye, appointed or elevated by three different Republican governors, I highlighted the alarm During Trump's first administration, ICE agents “stalking” the courts instilled fear of victims and witnesses, endangering the administration of justice. We need to know about school leaders when public education is endangering in a similar way.
Surveillance and stalking undermine childhood education. Assistance and learning suffer when schools no longer feel safe. Children, natives and newcomers equally should not be sacrificed by the imprudent immigration application. The states and localities must fulfill their constitutional and moral mandate to educate all students, even if that means facing the president.
Shayak Sarkar is a law professor at UC Davis. Josh Rosenthal is a lawyer in Los Angeles who has represented local governments, immigrants and unions.
