In a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters requested $475 million as reimbursement to state taxpayers for paying to educate children of undocumented immigrants, claiming that Harris is responsible for the cost because of her role as overseer of the US-Mexico border policies.
This letter is Walters most recent publicity stunt to politicalize the students of Oklahoma. By law, all students are entitled to a free public education, regardless of their immigration status. Additionally, it was deemed in the 1982 Plyler vs. Doe Supreme Court decision that students without documentation are still guaranteed education.
Walters is currently under investigation for violating state ethics laws for airing his personal political opinions through state social media accounts, including the previously mentioned letter to Harris.
Since the inauguration of Trump, Walters has intensified his anti-immigrant rhetoric. In a TV interview with KOCO, he said, “I would help the Trump Administration in any way they see fit to carry out immigration enforcement, including ICE raids in schools.”
Walters’ remarks are targeting the lives of immigrant children in Oklahoma, many of which were brought to the US at a young age or were born here. Living in this country has been all they’ve ever known and being forcibly removed and sent to an unknown country could have devastating effects on their lives.
You might think that no one you know could be affected by deportation, but the person sitting next to you in class might be in danger of being removed from their school, home and everything familiar to them.
One student at Edmond North is fearful that this may be her reality. She agreed to share her story, with the condition she remain anonymous. Although she is an American citizen, her parents are not.
This student’s parents are well-educated citizens of Mexico. To escape the growing dangers of a government accused of widespread corruption and because of safety concerns for their future, her parents illegally immigrated to the United States to start a new life. Her father was originally an esteemed attorney in Mexico, and her mother was a government official. Her parents’ work centered around tackling the problems of domestic abuse and child abuse in their country.
However, in America, they aren’t working such highly regarded jobs, as her father now works at his local church, and her mother works in a Mexican restaurant serving as a hostess. Both of them are very educated and accomplished people; however, they can no longer work in their former professions because they are not legal citizens. Attaining citizenship is long, complicated and expensive, and many people are unable to complete the process.
Furthermore, racial discrimination makes the lives of illegal immigrants even more of a struggle.
Racial discrimination is a big problem in the US, and nearly half of the immigrant population says that they face racial discrimination at work. The student’s mother endures hateful backlash from customers at her place of employment.
“My mom would come home crying and be like, ‘These teenage boys would come into the (Mexican) restaurant and make fun of me and tell me, why don’t you speak English?” the student recollects.
Even the student has faced racial discrimination at school. She recalls several instances when “students come up to me and ask me, are you or your parents illegal?”
At a young age, teens struggle to cope with the anxiety and sadness that stems from racism, but that isn’t the only thing immigrant families must worry about. As a person born in the US with parents who immigrated to the US from Mexico, this student has to live with the fear that her parents may be deported.
“I am a US citizen, so I would be left here with my 1 year old brother. They could take him with them, but then what? Take a 1 year old to a detention center?” she says.
Mexico has the largest immigrant detention system in the world. Immigrants from Mexico who are deported back are put in these detention centers until their legal status in the country is determined. The conditions in these detention centers are inhumane. There is overcrowding, poor medical care, cold temperatures and diseases that spread through the centers.
Of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, a large number of them have children who are US citizens and cannot be legally deported. For Trump to fulfill his campaign promises, he will need to either separate four million children from their parents, or he will have to send those children illegally with their parents.
The student believes that these policies are tearing families apart in addition to taking away the only way of life she has ever known.
“All my friends are American. All my friends live here. I have lived in Oklahoma basically my entire life, and you’re going to uproot me, take me out of my high school, out of my hobbies, out of my clubs and just take me to Mexico?” says the student.
The student is not advocating for open borders. She understands that people shouldn’t have come here illegally, but she also knows that many immigrants have fled dangerous situations in their home country and have lived here for the majority of their lives. They have jobs here and pay taxes.
Even after a family is deported from the US, most have little connection to their home country. This student fears that if her family is deported, her family will be homeless, and her parents will be unemployed, upending her life, her education and her hopes and dreams.
This young woman is a very intelligent student who has excellent grades and is in many advanced courses. In addition to being involved in many clubs and active in the school, she has a part-time job to help with expenses. She has a friend group that she’s grown close to, and she is a valued part of the Edmond North school community.
“I hope I get to keep my citizenship because I like it here. I like my school. I like my friends, and I don’t think I could survive in Mexico.”
Nonprofit organizations such as Latitude Legal Alliance are working in communities in Oklahoma to provide the assistance immigrants need to be legal migrants of the US in times of uncertainty and fear.
