School Aims to Catch Students from Mexico

December 29th, 2007 @ 1:13pm

by Associated Press

CALEXICO, Calif. (AP) _ Children are more apt to shield their faces than to smile when Daniel Santillan points his camera.

Santillan's photos aren't for any picture album or yearbook _ they help prove that Mexicans are illegally attending public schools in this California border community.

With too many students and too few classrooms, Calexico school officials took the unusual step of hiring someone to photograph children and document the offenders.

Santillan snaps pictures at the city's downtown border crossing and shares the images with school principals, who use them as evidence to kick out those living in Mexico.

Since he started the job two years ago, the number of students in the Calexico school system has fallen by 5 percent, from 9,600 to 9,100, while the city's population grew about 3 percent.

``The community asked us to do this, and we responded,'' said board President Enrique Alvarado of the Calexico Unified School District. ``Once it starts to affect you personally, when your daughter gets bumped to another school, then our residents start complaining.''

Every day along the 1,952-mile border, children from Mexico cross into the United States and attend public schools. No one keeps statistics on how many children make the trek.

Citizenship isn't the issue for school officials; district residency is.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled illegal immigrants have a right to an education, so schools don't ask about immigration status. But citizens and illegal immigrants alike can't falsely claim residency in a school district.

Enforcement of residency requirements varies widely along the border. Some schools do little to verify where children live beyond checking leases or utility bills, while others dispatch officials to homes when suspicions are raised.

Jesus Gandara, superintendent of Sweetwater Union High School District, with 44,000 students along San Diego's border with Mexico, said tracking children at the border goes too far. ``If you do that, you're playing immigration agent,'' he said.

The El Paso Independent School District in Texas sends employees to homes when suspicions are raised. But spokesman Luis Villalobos said photographing students at the border would be a monumental, unproductive effort.

That's not the thinking in Calexico, a city 120 miles east of San Diego that has seen its population double to 38,000 since 1990. A steel fence along the border separates Calexico from Mexicali, an industrial city of about 750,000 that sends shoppers and farm laborers to California.

Calexico's rapid growth outstripped school resources, resulting in overcrowding and prompting demands that Mexican interlopers be ousted. Taxpayers complained their children were bused across town because neighborhood schools were full, even after Calexico voters approved a $30 million construction measure in 2004. Portable classrooms proliferated.

The 62-year-old Santillan (pronounced sahn-tee-YAHN) was hired in 2005. He is an unlikely enforcer. Posters of Cesar Chavez and Che Guevara adorn the walls of his ranch-style home. The Vietnam War veteran and labor activist is an outspoken advocate of amnesty for illegal immigrants and fills water jugs in the desert for Mexicans who trek across the border illegally.

He parks his old Toyota Echo at the border two or three mornings a week, often in a handicapped spot that his bad knees allow him to occupy. He photographs some of the hundreds of students who exit the inspection building and walk to class.

Some hide their faces when they see his 6-foot-5, 310-pound frame. Sometimes he follows students to school.

Many of the students know him. Others in town are not always sure what he is up to. A new police officer once ran his name through a database of sex offenders. A talk-radio host warned listeners that an odd-looking man at the border may be looking for children to kidnap.

Some students taunt him. Friends have called him a hypocrite. Santillan reminds them that he is only enforcing school residency rules, not immigration laws. Still, he says, ``You've got to have hell of a tough skin.''

The California native also visits addresses listed on student enrollment forms, knocking on doors as late as 9 p.m. and introducing himself in Spanish.

One crisp December morning, he went to three homes before dawn, carrying a clipboard with several pages of students suspected of living in Mexico. A woman who opened her door at 6:30 a.m. said her niece no longer lives with her. At another home, a woman said her niece moved last month.

Many Calexico residents support the crackdown.

Fernando Torres, a former mayor, was upset when the district said his grandchildren would have to transfer because there was no room in their neighborhood school. ``It's not right'' for U.S. taxpayers to build classrooms for Mexican residents, he said. The district eventually relented.

School board member Eduardo Rivera estimates there are still 250 to 400 Mexican residents attending Calexico's schools.

``It's a continual struggle,'' Rivera said. ``You have people who are determined to continue sending their kids over here.''

 

We need more work on our illegal alien problem.  The cost to legal taxpaying citizens is simply astronomical in regards to education, healthcare, social benefits, etc., etc.

This just gripes my a&&.  My son has to deal with this issue as well.  We live approx.  50 miles north of Calexico.  I am so sick of the pandering that goes on for these people.  As these children get older they are not going to return home after school one day.  OOPPs !!!!  ANOTHER illegal in our country times 5 or six babies.   CLOSE THE BORDER.  NOW.  

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Well. Donna. if if I lived that close, I would do whatever I could to support their eforts !!  So, go for it !!

They need to do this in Deming New Mexico

They need to do this EVERYWHERE in AMERICA, jmac!

So yet another "indirect" approach, instead of enforcing our immigration laws!  Go for the loophole of school district residency -- but don't enforce immigration laws.  At least they're doing something -- yea!

Come on, FEDS -- enforce our laws, and quit dancin' around the 800 pound gorilla in our living room! 

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Jim from Texas said:

They need to do this EVERYWHERE in AMERICA, jmac!

So yet another "indirect" approach, instead of enforcing our immigration laws!  Go for the loophole of school district residency -- but don't enforce immigration laws.  At least they're doing something -- yea!

Come on, FEDS -- enforce our laws, and quit dancin' around the 800 pound gorilla in our living room! 

 

Yes they do need to do it everywhere.  My 8 yr. old grandson had to change schools this year in Portland, OR. because he was the only  one of very few 'english-speaking' students left it the school.  That area has been completely taken over by hispanics since he started school 3 yrs ago.  Now he goes alot further to a different school district and is the only kid in his class that can speak spanish!  He had to larn to speak it to survive in his previous school!  How WRONG it that here in the good ole U.S. of A!

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When I was in the 7th grade and living in the wrong school district that my mother wanted me to go, they found out and kicked me out. It was that easy way back then, and it was the school district who enforced it. I find it absurb that these school districts cannot keep a tally on what children are legally living in their district, much less children living in another country. 

 

 

I thinks it's horrible that they have to resort to this because our government won't protect us from invasion.  I also hope that this type of trend continues.  Maybe we can make our nation so unwelcoming to illegal invaders that their numbers will decrease.  Keep up the pressure wherever and whenever possible.

I also think the photographer is a hyprocrite.  He has Che Guevara posters hanging up yet is apparently all for free enterprise.  It always amazes me that people who claim those beliefs never really walk the walk.  It reminds me of the press conference that one of Hugo Chavez's top people held a few weeks ago and a reporter called him out for wearing Versaci.

Also, maybe the town should consider changing its name from Calexico to something without mention of Mexico in it.  That wouldn't stop the problem but would be a nice symbolic gesture. 

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School districts recieve  monies from the State and Federal governments based upon ATTENDANCE. Most school districts want MORE money and so will "look the other way" if it gains them more students. Every student must provide an address that is within the school district territory (sometimes a store address or vacant lot is used or friend's home address). With the scramble for money that school districts are constantly involved in, I am surprised the Calexico School District is taking this action (though I am GLAD they are taking this action).

At South Oceanside Elementary School (about 25 miles north of the border) there is a cherry 1970 Cadillac that pulls up at the back of the ball field and unloads about 8 children every morning. The caddy has Baja plates. This has been going on for years. I doubt anyone from the district will ever "look into this".

ConcernedMom said:

Also, maybe the town should consider changing its name from Calexico to something without mention of Mexico in it.  That wouldn't stop the problem but would be a nice symbolic gesture. 

Good idea, ConcernedMom!  Mexico has Mexicali, so how about Americali OR Calimerica?

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The people of California need to really start getting physical.  By that I mean march and march and march until they cannot be ignored any longer. I wonder if our wonderful Supreme Court would rule that it is unconstitutional to keep these Mexican's out of our schools?  Probably.  The state of California needs to step up and take care of this.  I know that there are U.S. Reps. who are against this as well as illegal aliens in our schools.  Like Rohrbacher, Bilbray and Hunter.  Are there any state reps. or senators with the same views?

justducky said: Well. Donna. if if I lived that close, I would do whatever I could to support their eforts !!  So, go for it !!

 

I don't live in their school district and I know that in my son's school they do check for addresses in the limits of the attending school.  The problem here lays with the fact that the illegals are able to rent homes within the boundry of the school of their choice.

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