Education

Feds Force Public Schools To Enroll Illegal Immigrant Children With No Medical Screening

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Since October 2013, 50,303 “unaccompanied children” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have crossed America’s porous Southern border to claim green cards via the immigration courts.

The Obama administration has sent none of these children home. Instead, federal officials have chosen to set aside normal immigration practices and to allow this wave of young illegal immigrants to apply for green cards via asylum applications and to disperse across the country. (RELATED: Obama Hides Steady Inflow Of Central American Migrants)

With school now in session, these kids have enrolled in public schools nationwide.

In the event that any of these thousands of Central American children are carrying communicable diseases, experts claim, any subsequent health crisis will likely first manifest itself within a public school environment.

That’s alarming news. But wait! There’s more!

According to the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, the Obama administration has not subjected a large number of these children to proper medical screening processes.

Instead, the federal government has sent the unaccompanied minors to various U.S. locations to live with relatives or, in some cases, to live as foster wards. The children then enroll in local, taxpayer-funded public schools with no questions asked — by law.

Dr. Elaina George, a member of the national advisory council of the Project 21 black leadership network and a board-certified otolaryngologist, warned that this policy adds up to the possibility of a very serious disease outbreak.

“There’s no mechanism in place to ensure children are checked medically,” George told The Daily Caller. “It’s put everybody at risk. Anybody who comes into contact with a disease — tuberculosis, for example — is at risk.”

“This is not something that’s theoretical. This is not something that kind of happened. It’s happened,” she added.

“All you need is one person with tuberculosis to cough on somebody else. Share a cup. Other kids are at risk. Teachers are at risk. Parents are at risk. Grandparents are at risk.”

In Virginia, for example, the state Department of Education issued a July memo ordering local school districts to accept illegal immigrant children even if they have no home and no documentation concerning their health or immunization status.

The memo stated, in part, that local schools “cannot exclude from school attendance those homeless children who do not provide the requisite health or immunization information required of other students.”

School districts are supposed to refer students who don’t present immunization documentation to a local social worker who will assist with obtaining physical examinations and required vaccinations.

There’s no guarantee social workers will follow through with the assistance, though, and, as George notes, by the time sick kids rub shoulders with healthy kids, it could be entirely too late.

School districts have no choice but to enroll illegal immigrant children. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that a state law (in Texas) preventing the children of illegal immigrants from attending public schools was unconstitutional because denying the children basic education contributes to “the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries.”

Additionally, in May of this year, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice sent a joint letter to school districts nationwide warning that they would “contravene Federal law” if they “chill or discourage the participation, or lead to the exclusion, of students based on their or their parents’ or guardians’ actual or perceived citizenship or immigration status.” (RELATED: White House Tells Public Schools To Enroll Illegals Despite Lack Of Age Or Address Evidence)

Another member of the Project 21 black leadership network, Michael Dozier, Ph.D., has noted that unchecked immigration is fraught with public health risks.

“Latin America is currently dealing with a mysterious epidemic reported to cause chronic renal failure and death that has killed more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000,” Dozier claimed. “It has spread as far north as southern Mexico and south into Panama. Diseases such as this could be carried across our border by illegal immigrants and could create a nationwide health crisis.”

The Obama administration is fully aware of the health risks presented by its policy of forcing potentially unvaccinated, diseased immigrants into public schools.

In a July 30 memo to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General, John Roth, warned that many of the illegal immigrants who have recently arrived from Central America “require treatment for communicable diseases, including respiratory illnesses, tuberculosis, chicken pox and scabies.” Some illegal immigrants transmitted some of those diseases to Border Patrol agents at a Del Rio, Texas holding facility.

To make bad matters worse, the DHS Inspector General released a report last week warning that the United States is “ill-prepared” for a pandemic. The agency noted that the federal government has failed to manage its stockpile of protective gear and antiviral medications. At the same time, the feds have an overabundance of some supplies which would be useless in the event of a severe outbreak, such as influenza. (RELATED: Audit: Homeland Security ‘Ill-Prepared’ For Pandemic)

Project 21, which is a conservative public policy group, observes that the Obama administration’s policy of placing illegal immigrant children in public schools around the country is likely to affect black children disproportionately because black children tend to live in urban areas and rural areas in the Southeast. Both have been popular destinations for illegal immigrant children.

“Will children of the elites and liberals enrolled in private schools who advocate for this de facto amnesty be subjected to the same health risks as public school students?” asked Project 21 member Christopher Arps.

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