Government

Betsy DeVos Says It's Up To The Schools Whether To Follow The Constitution

It's amazing how comfortable these Trump people are with being bigoted towards children.

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Betsy DeVos (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Betsy DeVos is probably the dumbest person to ever be named Secretary of Education. I don’t mean “dumb” in an ad hominem way, I mean that she seems to be clinically stupid. She’s actually ignorant of legal and constitutional requirements around education in this country.

And that would be fine, more or less, if that stupidity and ignorance were not also married to hatred and bigotry for non-white or non-conforming children. But when you couple a desire to hurt children with an ignorance of the laws that prohibit you from doing so, you end up with this grotesquerie masquerading as Education Secretary.

The latest from her shameful annals happened yesterday, when DeVos was asked whether schools should report undocumented children to the Gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement. DeVos said: “I think that’s a school decision… That’s a local community decision. And again, I refer to the fact that we have laws and we also are compassionate, and I urge this body to do its job and address or clarify where there is confusion around this.”

The only “confusion” is in DeVos’s evil brain where she thinks we live in a country where children are ratted out to stormtroppers based on the color of their skin and their parents’ country of origin. The Supreme Court has already weighed in on this issue. From the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court made clear in Plyler v. Doe that public schools have a constitutional obligation to provide schooling for children, regardless of immigration status. That means schools also cannot enforce measures that would deter undocumented children from registering. They cannot ask about immigration status. And according to the American Civil Liberties Union, they cannot report students or their families to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Let’s be clear: Any school that reports a child to ICE would violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court has made clear that every child in America has a right to a basic education, regardless of immigration status,” Lorella Praeli, the ACLU’s director of immigration policy and campaigns, said in a statement. “Secretary DeVos is once again wrong.”

It’s okay if the average American doesn’t know that children are entitled to education regardless of status. It’s unforgivable for the goddamn Secretary of Education to not know that.

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I hope I live long enough to see every one who ever promoted the idea of turning over children to ICE held accountable for this moral turpitude. History venerates people like Oskar Schindler. It curses people like Betsy DeVos.

‘Astounding ignorance of the law’: Civil rights groups slam DeVos for saying schools can report undocumented students [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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