Abbott wants to ban public ed for unauthorized immigrants
Gov. Greg Abbott wants to try to reinstate a 1975 Texas law withholding state funds from school districts for kids who were not “legally admitted” into the United States.
In an interview Wednesday on the Joe Pags radio show, Abbott said he would “resurrect” litigation over the law, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1982.
“The challenges put on our public systems is extraordinary,” Abbott said, before referencing Plyler v. Doe, the ruling that overturned the Texas law. “I think that we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler v. Doe was issued many years ago.”
In that case, the court ruled that “education has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society,” and withholding it from the children of immigrants in the country without paperwork “does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice.” People living without documentation in the country remain people “in any ordinary sense of the term” and are thus entitled to the same basic rights as anyone else in the country.
The plaintiffs in the Plyler case, four families who lost access to education under the Texas law, were represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
“Greg Abbott has once more distinguished himself as one of our most irresponsible and desperate politicians,” Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, said in a statement. The Plyler decision, he said, is firmly established by the high court and has also been endorsed by Congress.
In Houston on Thursday, the governor said that the increased flow of immigrants into the country since the Plyler decision is so extreme that it warrants a change of policy. And he pointed to the 18,000 migrants a day the Biden administration expects at the border as it lifts a Trump-era COVID-19 public health order that has been used to immediately expel more than 2 million people who crossed the border.
“That leads to education obligations, as well as other obligations, that are simply unsustainable and unaffordable,” Abbott said. “It should be the
federal government — not the state of Texas — footing this bill.”
Republican-appointed justices now hold a strong majority on the court, and conservative elected officials like Abbott have been pressing the advantage to reshape federal policy. The governor’s remarks come shortly after a draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked showing five of the nine justices ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group that studies migration globally, estimates there are 1.7 million people living in Texas without paperwork, including 116,000 enrolled in schools. The total student population is 5.4 million, so those without documentation make up roughly 2 percent.
During the interview Wednesday, Pags said there are a large number of children taking classes to learn English as a second language in his child’s school.
“You know that you’re not ethnocentric, neither am I, we love Latinos, we love everybody,” said Pags, who is conservative. “But we’re talking about public tax dollars, public property tax dollars, going to teach children who are 5, 6, 7, 10 years old who don’t even have remedial English skills. This is a real burden on communities.”
The state is pouring billions of dollars into border security and Operation Lone Star, where Texas National Guard troops are patrolling the border and apprehending immigrants and refugees. Abbott speaks frequently about the need to stop the influx of drugs into the country, though the amount of drugs apprehended at the border through the operation has been minimal, and critics have accused the governor of engaging in political theater without tangible policy objectives with the operation.
Abbott also has set up buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., a policy he promoted during the Wednesday radio interview. The White House and some of the migrants themselves have thanked Abbott for the free crosscountry ride, as many intended to go to Washington anyway or it will be easier for them to access services from there.
Rodolfo Rosales Jr., state director for the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens, said estimating the real number of people without documentation is difficult because they are often “living in the shadows” and avoiding any official record.