Families enrolling children in Oklahoma public schools will have to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship under new rules approved Tuesday by the state’s education board.
The proposed regulation, which must be approved by the governor and the Legislature, would require school districts to track the number of students who cannot verify their immigration status and report those figures to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
“Our rule around illegal immigration accounting is simply that; it is to account for how many students of illegal immigrants are in our schools,” Ryan Walters, the state superintendent, said at the Tuesday meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education.
Outside the building in Oklahoma City, dozens of students protested Walters’ immigration policies and called to keep deportation agents off school campuses.
Walters — who gained a reputation in office for focusing on culture war issues and inviting right-wing influencers into state government — met resistance last year when he said he intended to ask school districts to help his office calculate the cost of illegal immigration on the public education system.
A dozen districts told NBC News in August that they would not check the immigration status of their students, with many citing a desire not to violate Supreme Court precedent, nor discourage foreign-born families from enrolling children in school.
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Walters said Tuesday that Oklahoma spent $474 million to educate children of undocumented immigrants under the Biden administration. That figure came from an analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform — a right-wing nonprofit founded by the late activist John Tanton, who promoted eugenics and opposed nonwhite migration to the U.S. — and was based on an estimate the group did using census data from 2020.
“You have to have the data around where your kids are coming from,” Walters said at the state board meeting. “We will make sure that President Trump and his administration have this information.”
Melissa Lujan, an immigrant rights attorney in Oklahoma City, said she has received at least six calls from clients this week asking what documentation they need to show at their children’s schools — under the mistaken assumption that the rules are already in effect, and in light of Walters’ statement that he would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to collect children from public schools for deportation.
“They’re freaking out,” Lujan said.
In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that the government cannot prevent children of undocumented immigrants from attending public school. The vote was 5-4, but the dissent did not advocate for excluding undocumented immigrant children from public schools.
A decade ago, federal courts struck down a similar Alabama law to collect the immigration status of school children.
Kit Johnson, a University of Oklahoma law professor who specializes in immigration law, predicts that the rules advanced by Walters will meet a similar fate when they are inevitably challenged in court.
“This one will be found unconstitutional,” Johnson said. “Even with Walters saying, ‘Oh, we’re just data collecting’ — if it’s going to chill the opportunity for children to have an equal access to education, it is not allowed.”
Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, said the group is considering litigation to block the rules if the governor and Legislature approve them, but that doesn’t provide a lot of comfort in the near term for immigrant families.
“Just the threat of this causes harm, and we believe that is the intention — to scare students from going to school,” she said.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentry Drummond “believes it is lawful to request such documentation” of a child’s immigration status, because the rule stipulates “failure to produce the material does not preclude enrollment,” a spokesman for his office said Tuesday.
Gov. Kevin Stitt and Republican legislative leaders did not respond to requests for comment on the immigration rules.
