BOSTON (AP) — At a sparsely attended meeting last year, the Saugus Public School Committee approved a fresh admissions policy to streamline the process of enrolling students.
But critics say the policy — including strict requirements to prove “legal” residency and “criminal and civil penalties” for violations — has a different goal: keeping immigrants out of the petite school district outside Boston.
The debate over admitting immigrant children into America’s schools extends far beyond the Boston suburbs. Advocates fear it could play a more prominent role on the national agenda if Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House.
Conservative politicians in states like Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee are questioning whether undocumented immigrants should have the right to a public education, raising the possibility of challenges to another landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.
For decades, children of families living in the country illegally have had the right to attend public school, based on a 1982 Supreme Court decision known as Plyler v. Doe. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny children an education based on their immigration status.
The fresh Saugus policy requires fresh students to share immigration documents and states that children “must be a legal resident of Saugus,” where the share of students learning English has nearly tripled in the last decade to 31%. Families must also complete a city census, sign a certificate of residence, and provide supporting documents and identification documents.
Civil rights lawyers say the requirements are burdensome and violate federal law because they disproportionately harm students from immigrant families who may lack many of the required documents, regardless of whether they live in the country legally.
Saugus School Committee Chairman Vincent Serino said during the meeting that the policy “tightens” existing residency requirements and is not aimed at keeping immigrants out.
But one Nicaraguan woman said it took her six months to register her eight-year-old child because of document requirements. The woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation for her child, said the city would not accept her lease and her complaints to the school were dismissed.
Increasing attempts to plyler v. Undermining Doe should be taken seriously, immigration experts say, pointing to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s willingness to overturn longstanding precedents, particularly on abortion rights and affirmative action in higher education.
Trump, a Republican, has made immigration a central plank of his 2024 campaign and vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if he wins. He calls immigrants “animals” and “murderers” and has spoken of immigrant children bringing disease into classrooms. A photo shown at a recent Trump rally showed a crowded classroom with the caption “Open border = full classrooms.”
There is no denying that the immigrant population is straining schools in many communities, leading to overcrowded classrooms and forcing teachers to adapt to immense numbers of Spanish-speaking students.
But until recently, the idea of denying children an education was considered “too far to the right and too far to the fringe,” said Tom K. Wong, director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego. “But now we are experiencing a political climate in which previously fringe politics are becoming mainstream.”
Earlier this year, the conservative Heritage Foundation called on states to pass laws requiring public schools to charge tuition to families living in the country illegally. Doing so, a policy brief said, would trigger a lawsuit that would likely “cause the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-advised Plyler v. Doe decision.”
Over the summer, Oklahoma Education Superintendent Ryan Walters announced that his office would issue guidance to districts on gathering information about the “costs and burdens” of illegal immigration on school districts.
“The federal government has failed to secure our borders. Our schools are suffering,” Walters said.
Several school districts have pushed back, saying they do not check students’ immigration status.
“Federal law is fairly clear on this issue, prohibiting districts from asking students or their families about their immigration status or requiring proof of their citizenship,” Chris Payne, a spokesman for Union Public Schools in Tulsa, outlined a joint statement Interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling.
In Tennessee, a proposal from Republican Gov. Bill Lee for universal school vouchers sparked debate over whether to exclude immigrant students. The idea appealed to many conservative members of the legislature, but some feared the exclusion would trigger legal challenges. Ultimately, Lee abandoned his voucher proposal after several aspects of the plan failed to garner support.
The Saugus School Board in Massachusetts approved its admissions policy at a committee meeting in August 2023, two days after Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency over the state’s migrant crisis. At that time, Healey said, nearly 5,600 families — many of them immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela — were living in government housing, up from about 3,100 families the year before.
Serino, the school board chairman, said the group began considering updating its residency requirements more than a year before migrants became an issue in the state. He said the policy requires documents such as a signed landlord affidavit or a property tax bill, “simple things that everyone has.”
“We didn’t hurt anyone and no one came to us – no migrant, no parent came to us to complain about the policy,” Serino said.
Local lawyers say the rule has been a hurdle for at least two immigrant families trying to enroll in Saugus schools. Lawyers For Civil Rights and the group Massachusetts Advocates for Children said it took their intervention to get the students into school.
“The policy itself is illegal,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights. “Schools should welcome (all) children in the district and educate them.”
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in 2022 that Plyler v. Doe should be challenged and the federal government should pay for public education for students who are not legal residents. He faced backlash from immigration advocates and the White House. The following year, Republican lawmakers in Texas introduced several unsuccessful bills aimed at barring noncitizen children from public schools.
In June, the idea was also included in the Texas Republican Party’s platform.
Among the party’s priorities for the coming legislative session is “the elimination of all subsidies and public services, including public college tuition and public school enrollment, for illegal immigrants, with the exception of emergency medical care.”
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Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this article. Gecker reported from San Francisco.
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