Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma state superintendent of schools, on Thursday said he would not rule out letting Immigration and Customs Enforcement conduct operations in public schools.
“Schools haven’t been working with law enforcement on this,”he told a reporter from Tulsa’s ABC affiliate. “Well, look, in Oklahoma, we’re going to work with law enforcement. We’re going to work with the Trump administration.”
“So you’re not completely ruling out a raid on an Oklahoma school?” the reporter asked.
“No, if that’s what President Trump sees fit, as there’s an illegal immigrant population there that needs to have enforcement there to remove them from the schools, absolutely,” he said. “We will work with him to make sure he’s able to carry that out.”
Earlier this week, the Trump administration rolled back a policy that kept ICE agents from conducting raids in sensitive areas like schools, hospitals and churches. The Obama administration originally put the rule in place in 2011, and ICE adhered to it during Donald Trump’s first term.
Walters, who oversees the Oklahoma State Department of Education, has been a fervent supporter of Trump. He’s known for his attacks on teachers and false claims about public schools being overrun with sexually explicit material, as well as for trying to mandate that the Christian Bible be taught in public schools.
Walters has appeared eager to work with the administration on their promise of conducting unprecedented mass deportations. Last month, he proposed a rule to allow the OSDE to collect data on undocumented children who attend public school. In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their immigration status. Walters has said the state will not create a database of undocumented students, but insists the information is needed for funding purposes.
But with Trump’s deluge of orders specifically cracking down on immigrants and Walters’ position as a well-known acolyte to the president, advocates are worried that Oklahoma officials will use that information to help ICE target immigrant families. There are 6,000 children without legal status who attend school in Oklahoma, according to an estimate from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that tracks and analyzes data on immigrants.
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At a public hearing earlier this month for the proposed rule, all 19 speakers came out against it.
Walters did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Walters’ willingness to let ICE operate in schools sets him apart from education in other parts of the U.S. In December, after Tom Homan, who served as Trump’s ICE director during his first term and is now the president’s border “czar,” reportedly made comments about the administration ending the practice of refraining from conducting operations in sensitive areas, several administrators announced that their districts would not work with immigration officials and made efforts to remind families of their rights.