Emboldened by the right-wing Supreme Court’s draft forced birth ruling that is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to challenge the historic 1982 court decision that guarantees a public school education to all children regardless of immigration status.
The Latino civil rights education that secured that historic victory condemned the threat, calling Abbott “woefully ill-informed.” But Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) President Thomas A. Saenz tells The Center for Public Integrity the threat can be tied to the racist “replacement theory” now supported by prominent Republican lawmakers.
RELATED STORY: Latino group that won historic Plyler v. Doe case condemns Abbott as 'irresponsible and desperate'
“[Abbott] is just grasping at different things that fall within a broader theme of being anti-immigrant that he seems to have built his re-election campaign around,” Saenz told The Center for Public Integrity. This is very true. Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry have cumulatively spent billions in taxpayer funds on supposed border initiatives over nearly two decades, without much of anything to show for it. Other than political wins, that is.
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“Now that said, if it is a considered decision, it may be because [of] this replacement theory,” Saenz continued in the interview. “The replacement theory is premised on increasing numbers. So children are in some ways an indication of increasing numbers of adults in the future. So to the extent he thought about it, perhaps it’s consistent with this racist replacement theory that’s caught hold in certain Republican circles.”
But all of it, really. Replacement theory was echoed last year by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the number three House Republican. Following a deadly mass shooting at the hands of a white supremacist in Buffalo last month, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly refused to denounce the racist belief. A poll conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research before Buffalo found “substantial support” for the theory among the GOP electorate.
“By the way, Stefanik isn’t trying to redeem herself by denouncing white nationalism either,” Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter wrote. “Instead, she says the Buffalo terrorist attack shouldn’t be politicized.” Which is what they’re also now saying about the Uvalde mass shooting that took the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers. When they say things shouldn’t be politicized, they mean they don’t want you to point out what they helped encourage.
Saenz told The Center for Public Integrity that when some schools have displayed possible Plyler v. Doe violations, “all it takes is a letter. Usually, the violations are not intended to be violations, so once it’s brought to their attention, schools change them. Indeed, in some cases, it’s just a lower-level employee deciding on their own to demand a Social Security number.” He said that when former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos claimed during a hearing that school districts could decide on their own to admit undocumented students, “she had to immediately go back and backtrack, but even that kind of irresponsible comment has an impact.”
"The Supreme Court made it crystal clear that children, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to an education,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Royce Murray said in 2018. But now in 2022, it’s a very different Supreme Court, and soulless politicians who tout the same vile rhetoric used by racist mass killers know it.
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