Civil rights group says schools must address student anxieties on immigration enforcement
School districts that fail to address the anxieties experienced by undocumented students as a result of federal immigration policies of the Trump administration may be violating their students’ constitutional rights to a meaningful education, said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).
Founded in 1968, the Los Angeles-based MALDEF is a leading civil rights organization advocating on behalf of Latinos in California and nationally. Saenz was referring to the widespread anxieties experienced by children who are either themselves undocumented or have one or both parents who are, and fear that they or their parents will be deported. Parents may be afraid to take their children to school, out of fear of being picked up by immigration authorities, or children may themselves experience generalized anxieties that affects their ability to learn, or to attend school at all.
“Clearly there are other things that cause anxiety, but this level of anxiety occasioned by immigration enforcement is completely unprecedented,” Saenz said in an interview with EdSource.
In the mid-1970s, MALDEF filed suit on behalf of undocumented students in Texas after the state allowed school districts to levy immigrant students to pay tuition to attend public school if they were not “legally admitted” to the United States. In the landmark Plyler v. Doe ruling in 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court, held that states could not constitutionally deny students a free public education because of their immigration status. James Plyler was the superintendent of the Tyler Independent School District that charged undocumented students $1000 annually to enroll in its schools.
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