A new Oklahoma rule could track how many students have undocumented immigrant parents

Mariano Gonzalez stared directly at the spot where state superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters would normally be.

Inside the board room where the Oklahoma Department of Education meets, the 25-year-old detailed why he thought Walters and the board should change their minds about a proposed administrative rule that would track the number of undocumented K-12 students whose parents don’t have legal immigration status. Friday was the final day for public comment. The rule would have to be passed by the state Legislature, which has a Republican supermajority. If passed, it would take effect this summer.

Gonzalez, whose parents immigrated to the U.S., said he intended to speak on what he believed were Walters’ intentions with the new proposal — stoking fear and panic.

“He wants to prevent schools from being a welcoming environment for children,” he said. “Instead he wants to exploit them to persecute vulnerable communities.”

Instead, Gonzalez spoke to nearly empty chairs, save for two attorneys from the state department who were present for the hearing. Walters and his five fellow board members were not in attendance to hear the public’s comments.

Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of ACLU Oklahoma, speaks at a public hearing about a data-collecting proposal that some immigrant rights advocates say store fear among Oklahoma’s undocumented communities. Photo by Adam Kemp/PBS News

“It’s conspicuous that Ryan Walters himself is not here,” said Gonzalez, who along with some other attendees expected to see the state’s top education official.

“Coward,” shouted a woman sitting in the audience listening.

“Walters baselessly claims that migrants are a burden on schools, but he is the burden on schools,” Gonzalez said. “This rule, like Walters himself, is dangerously ignorant.”

The Supreme Court ruled in a 1982 landmark case Plyler v. Doe that states cannot deny children access to public K-12 education based on their immigration status. After Oklahoma’s rule was formally proposed last month, Walters said undocumented immigrants have brought drugs into the state, increased crime and become a burden to taxpayers.

The proposal is being considered as President Donald Trump, newly back in the White House, starts to follow through on his campaign promises. He issued a slew of executive orders on Day 1, including several aimed at immigration. In this first wave of orders, he declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and announced plans to end to birthright citizenship, which guarantees that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.

Attorneys general from 22 states filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block that executive order. Oklahoma was not one of them.

Walters announced last week that he filed a lawsuit against the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seeking $474 million in compensation for the “severe financial and operational strain” that the Biden administration’s border policies have placed on Oklahoma’s public schools.

“Here in Oklahoma, we will not allow the lawlessness of the Biden administration to continue to negatively impact our classrooms,” he said.

Advocates say the latest schools proposal is another attack on the undocumented community in the state and unnecessary as the immigration status of a parent does not indicate the status of their child.

What is in the new proposal?

The state education department’s new proposed rule adds a step to students’ enrollment paperwork. If ultimately approved by the Oklahoma Legislature, parents or legal guardians would need to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status to schools when enrolling their students for classes.

School districts would then be required to record the number of students whose parents or guardians couldn’t provide proof of their status. The state would take that aggregate number from each district to “assess statewide and local educational needs.” This includes determining what language and cultural barriers exist in schools, how many tutors and teachers are required to support English learners, as well as transportation and future funding needs, the proposal reads.

Walters has said he wants districts to calculate the financial impact those students have on districts and that he would take action in July to determine the “cost and burden” of students without legal immigration status attending Oklahoma’s public schools.

In collecting this data, school districts would only be expected to report the total number of students being sought by the administrative rule and not provide any personally identifiable information to the state education department.

Advocates have raised concerns about how this information is collected and reported.

While the proposed rule says it’s not creating a database for undocumented children, that same guarantee is not extended to their parents, said Kesa Mitchell, who works as a workplace developer for the legal arm of YWCA Tulsa. Her clients routinely seek help with documentation from the organization’s legal department. This is her greatest concern about the rule and why she felt compelled to speak out against it, she added.

“It postures itself as an intimidation tactic so that undocumented parents don’t bring their children into the public school system,” Mitchell said. “That leads to an increase in incarceration, a lack of education, and it feels like there is blatant intention behind it.”

Tamya Cox-Touré, executive director of ACLU Oklahoma, said the rule would discourage undocumented students or those with undocumented family members from enrolling in public school, which she said is a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution and the federal Civil Rights Act.

“Children fleeing from regimes in Venezuela or from the war in Ukraine could not enroll in schools in Oklahoma per this rule,” Cox-Touré said. “It also puts a burden on undocumented students that no other students would have to bear based solely on their immigration status.”

Cox-Touré said ACLU Oklahoma is prepared to support students and pointed to two ongoing lawsuits the civil rights organization has filed against the OSDE, one over Walter’s Bible mandate and the other over transgender students’ access to school facilities..

U.S. law says immigrant children have a right to public education

Two of the state’s biggest districts, Tulsa and Oklahoma City Public schools, have said they will not comply with the order if it’s approved.

“Federal law guarantees every child’s right to public education regardless of immigration status, and our District will continue operating in accordance with these established federal protections,” OKCPS superintendent Jamie Polk said in a December statement, adding that the district does not have plans to collect the immigration status of its students or their families.

Advocates worry those federal protections, in place for more than 40 years, could be the target of a broader challenge to immigrant rights from Republicans who now have full control of the government after Trump was sworn in.

Conservative school board members and GOP lawmakers in other states like Texas, Tennessee, and Utah have raised similar data-collecting rules.

Legal experts believe that conservatives hope to get the high court to reconsider its landmark case on the issue, as it did with Roe v. Wade and Chevron decisions.

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, said these kinds of efforts to prevent undocumented kids from attending school are “part of a broader assault on public education and ultimately our democracy.”

“It is in our collective best interest to protect access to schools for all, and to categorically reject extremists’ attempts to weaken public education,” she said.

In an interview on News Nation, Walters criticized the Plyler ruling saying it was a “terrible reading of the constitution.”

“Absolutely schools can ask if students are there illegally and absolutely schools can identify illegal immigrants and report that information,” Walters said. “We have to start there to give President Trump the ability to see inside the problem and its scope and totality inside our school system.”

Trump’s supporters are celebrating Walters’ effort to end “sanctuary schools,” but some district leaders and immigrant rights advocates say the plan is traumatizing vulnerable families.

Tasneem Al-Michael, the manager of community engagement for the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice, described at Friday’s hearing what it was like growing up undocumented in Oklahoma. He spoke about the fear of being deported or seeing your loved ones deported, even as he now has permanent residency.

“I was always told to keep your head down and watch what you say,” Al-Michael said. “Those concerns stick with you forever.”

Al-Michael said these new proposals are not a surprise to him or other undocumented people, but he’s worried about how those fears will be passed on to a new generation.

“We’ve seen the attacks happen nationally,” he said, but now the people in power are “trying to hyperlocalize these attacks so that now you can’t even attend school,” Al-Michael said.

Tara Jordan De Lara, an Oklahoma City-based immigration attorney who also heads the nonprofit Latitude Legal Alliance, which provides legal assistance to migrants, criticized the documents listed by OSDE as acceptable proof of citizenship, noting that they oversimplify the nuanced legal challenges migrant families encounter.

“An expired permanent resident card doesn’t revoke your legal, permanent resident status,” she said. “I see why they emphasize “unexpired”; it encourages people to renew and keep their documents current.”

However, she added, “If my green card expires this year, I can still live and work here legally for years without renewing it.”

De Lara also said that renewing a 10-year green card typically costs between $1,500 and $4,000 in attorney’s fees, though this amount can vary significantly.

What’s next?

With the public comment period now over, the state’s education board will vote on the rule proposals. The state Legislature will then decide from there whether to approve the new rule. If approved, the rule is expected to take effect this summer.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education held a public comment hearing for a proposed administrative rule that would add a step to the student enrollment process, focused on tracking students and their families’ immigration status. Photo by Adam Kemp/PBS News

As the child of immigrant parents, Gonzalez said he knows members of his community are often afraid to show up and speak out at events like this.

“I feel a duty as a citizen to speak out when the government is misbehaving,” he said, “especially when they are persecuting an already vulnerable community.”

Gonzalez doesn’t think he could sleep at night if he knew he had the power to say something and didn’t. He’s just hoping someone is listening.