Illegal Students

Here I am listing articles from the last couple of years regarding students legally entering the USA but illegally attending school. Though the articles are old the problem still exists!

State slow to investigate border-hopping students
Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Apr. 30, 2005 12:00 AM

LUKEVILLE - More than a year after ordering an investigation into students crossing the U.S.-Mexican border to attend school in Arizona, state schools chief Tom Horne acknowledged Friday that officials still haven't checked to see where the kids actually live.

"The investigation is proceeding," Horne said. "If there is abuse of taxpayer money, we will seek disciplinary action. This is still a serious matter."

Horne said in March 2004 that he planned to ask Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard to investigate reports by The Arizona Republic and CNN that an estimated 90 students living in Sonoyta, Mexico, were enrolled in school in Ajo.

Attorneys in Goddard's office prepared a detailed legal analysis and sent it to Horne last year, but the state still has not requested public records from the local school district or county to verify students' residency claims.

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Crossing the Line

Nogales school officials are trying to crack down on Mexican kids illegally crossing the border to go to school

By TIM VANDERPOOL

Wearing cute, crisp red shirts and pressed khakis, they stand out amid a bleary-eyed flow of humanity streaming northward through the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in downtown Nogales. It's an early morning ritual: From kindergartners to 12th graders, they're kids who routinely cross the line to get a decent education in Arizona.

Some tote fake documents; others stay with relatives on the American side. All of them pose as full-time United States residents. In the process, they must dodge school district monitors stationed at the port, part of an increasingly aggressive efforts to root them out.

On any given day in border towns such as Nogales, several hundred children can be involved in this daily game of cat-and-mouse. Some are mere tots, gripping their mother's hands. Others are older. And each denies crossing into Arizona to attend class.

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Kids crossing border for school scrutinized
Horne seeks Ajo inquiry; some districts crack down
Susan Carroll
Republic Nogales Bureau
Mar. 7, 2004 12:00 AM

Educators said the problem affects all school districts along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Estimating the number of students who cross the Arizona-Sonora line each day for school is impossible, officials say, because some parents provide fraudulent documents to establish residency or find a relative on the U.S. side to assume legal guardianship of a child.

So far this year, investigations have turned up roughly 100 students in Yuma and Nogales classrooms who were falsely claiming residency.

"There is no real way to know for certain how widespread the problem is," said Kelt Cooper, superintendent of the Nogales Unified School District.

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Probe finds Mexican students crossing border to attend school
By: ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN - Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Students living in Mexico have been regularly crossing the border to attend school in a remote southern Arizona community, a misuse of taxpayer funds, the state's top education official said Wednesday.

State Schools Superintendent Tom Horne said an investigator he sent to Lukeville, a border community, videotaped students walking across the border to a bus stop, then taking school buses to the community of Ajo, some 35 miles away.

"There are 85 students who ride the bus from a bus stop in Lukeville," Horne said. "The entire population of Lukeville is 60. So it's likely that most of the students reside in Mexico."

In 2004, there were 466 pre-kindergarten students through high school seniors in Ajo's three schools.

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In California, Mexican teens cross border daily for U.S. high school, have ‘for years’

February 6, 2004

Mexican teens have crossed the border every day to attend school in America for years. The schools, near San Diego, California, collect more tax dollars for enrolling more students.

The crossings were documented in 1993 when a former San Diego assemblyman videotaped students crossing the border and boarding a bus that took them to a U.S. school.

The illegal crossings for education continue eleven years later. On a recent day, students left Southwest High School for the day and got on a trolley that took them down to the border where they crossed to go home for the evening.

Sweetwater School District parents are outraged. Their children, they say, are forced to go to schools that are overcrowded due to the border-crossing students.

The district counters that they have very stringent residency rules and require students to show proof of residency before being enrolled. But the district admits it receives $5,400 each year from the state for each student enrolled, which some parents contend is the real issue.