Oklahoma Proposes Chilling New Rule For Immigrant Children

The Oklahoma State Department of Education proposed a new administrative rule on Tuesday that would require school districts to collect data on undocumented students in the state. The agency that oversees the state’s public and charter schools announced the proposed rule about a month before President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented immigrants, is back in the White House.

In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plyler v. Doe that schools must enroll all children, regardless of their immigration status, making it illegal to ask individual students about their immigration status.

Oklahoma’s proposed rule change would require school districts to report the number of students who are unable to prove their citizenship. This likely doesn’t run afoul of any state or federal laws — the text of the rule says that the data would be anonymous and not used to keep children from going to school — and could discourage parents from sending their children to school.

There are about 6,000 undocumented students enrolled in Oklahoma’s public schools, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“What purpose does such a requirement serve aside from creating yet another tool to ‘other’ children from different cultures, and to create a chilling effect on enrollment by minority children and their families?” Karen Svoboda, the executive director of Defense of Democracy, a nonprofit that advocates for equality in public schools, told The Oklahoman.

The public will be able to comment on the measure until Jan. 17. OSDE will hold public hearings before adopting the rule.

The proposed measure says the data would be used to gather information for funding needs, including English language instructors.

But Ryan Walters, the state superintendent for public instruction who oversees the agency, has made a name for himself as a right-wing extremist, heaping praise on Trump and claiming undocumented children are too expensive to educate. In October, Walters wrote a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris demanding that the Biden administration reimburse Oklahoma the $475 million he claims the state spent educating undocumented students.

“In conclusion, President Biden tasked you with remediating the crisis of illegal immigration at the southern U.S. border. Under your supervision, the costs in education due to illegal immigration have risen astronomically,” Walters wrote in the letter. “Your failed oversight and efforts are a direct cause of the current crises Oklahoma and other states now face. Oklahoma taxpayers, schools, teachers, and parents should not bear the burden of your failings.”

“Supt. Walters is committed to protecting Oklahomans from unfunded mandates, including the taxpayer burden imposed by the Biden administration’s failure on border policy,” Dan Isett, OSDE’s communications director, said in a statement to HuffPost. “A critical step in that process is to get the best possible information about the depth of the problem.”

Undocumented immigrants in Oklahoma paid $227 million in taxes in 2022, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

Dismantling the public education system has become a top priority for the Republican Party. Trump has made pie-in-the-sky promises about shutting down the Department of Education, and conservative groups and elected officials have spent the last few years attempting to ban books, attacking transgender students and passing laws meant to censor what teachers can say in the classroom.

As part of this movement, conservatives have also been pushing states to pass laws that could block undocumented children from going to school. During the campaign, Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested that undocumented students are hurting schools.

The Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, the extremist agenda for the second Trump administration, also promoted the idea. In a report titled “The Consequences of Unchecked Illegal Immigration on America’s Public Schools,” the conservative think tank proposes collecting data on undocumented students, making the data available to the public for cost analyses, and requiring the parents of undocumented students to pay tuition in order to attend public schools.

Requiring tuition for public schools is unconstitutional and would almost certainly trigger a lawsuit — which seems to be what the Heritage Foundation wants.

“Such legislation would draw a lawsuit from the Left, which would likely lead the Supreme Court to reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision that had no basis in law,” the group wrote in the report.