Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters argued Vice President Kamala Harris’s leadership on the border has offloaded the burden of illegal immigration to school districts.
Walters requested that the Biden-Harris administration reimburse over $474 million to Oklahoma schools for “the financial impact borne by Oklahoma taxpayers for education of illegal immigrant children.” The letter, issued Tuesday, comes as Walters deemed Harris as “the number one threat to parents and kids” in the United States.
“This open border policy has cost our state $474 million to educate illegal immigrant children,” Walters said on Fox News’s Fox and Friends First. “We have fentanyl pouring across into our schools, and we even had a terrorist that came across in our open border policies, that was arrested in one of our schools. Her open border is causing mass chaos into our schools, into our economy and into our society. We never had these problems under President Trump. We never had these issues in our schools and in our society. We had a closed border, safer schools, safe border. This is absolutely essential that her administration is held accountable. The border czar has failed us.”
Walters’s comment on Harris as “the border czar” comes after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a messaging bill in July condemning both the vice president and the Biden administration’s handling of border security. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, has sought to portray himself as the new border czar should he and Trump win.
The Oklahoma superintendent explained that the federal government mandates school districts to educate any child who will attend their school, regardless of whether they are legal immigrants or not. As such, schools are required to “quickly” allocate resources originally intended for students already enrolled, with one district even getting “100 a week” in illegal immigrants attending their district.
“So all of the resources that were there, prepared for our students in Oklahoma, are now being diverted to the students of illegal immigrants,” Walters said.
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The superintendent’s letter is not the first time Walters has feuded with the Biden administration, as he directed all of his local school districts not to comply with the administration’s rewrite of Title IX because it puts “women in danger.” He has also sought a “complete overhaul” to Oklahoma school curriculum with the goal to “inspire in students a love of country and a proper understanding of the American founding.”
Illegal immigration has been a major topic ahead of the 2024 presidential election, including the possibility of non-residents of the United States voting. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow Virginia to carry out a purge of an estimated 1,600 people from its voter rolls to prevent ineligible noncitizens from voting, a decision Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) deemed “a victory for commonsense and election fairness.”