MAGA Schools Chief Ready—and Eager—to Deport His State’s Migrant Kids

An Oklahoma education official who sought to place a Trump Bible in every classroom in his state has signaled to the new administration that he stands ready to help it deport undocumented kids as young as kindergarteners.

“Here in Oklahoma, we absolutely will work with President Trump. We will make sure he has the information he needs, any support on enforcing those policies we will happily assist as well,” State Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters told Oklahoma City TV station KOCO 5 News last week in response to reports of the president’s plans for large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants.

Walters said he would be pushing for the state’s Republican controlled legislature to approve a rule requiring schools to check every student’s immigration status.

“Schools will comply,” Walters told the station. “This is part of their accreditation, part of our accountability measures.”

He added, “They don’t get to pick and choose what laws they go by. This is federal law. This is about securing the border, making sure we’re a law-and-order country, so Oklahoma schools will comply.”

This week, Trump moved to remove Obama-era restrictions that have barred ICE from such “sensitive locations” such as hospitals, churches and schools; Walter has since gone as far as to say he’s ready to assist ICE raids on schools. He argued in a press statement on Friday that he would only be doing so in the best interests of the youngsters he is ready to target for forced removal from the country.

“For years the liberal media has been vilifying Republicans for separating illegal immigrant children from their parents,” Walters said. “Now they want us to explain why we’d let ICE agents into schools. The answer is simple: we want to ensure that deported parents are reconnected with their children and keep families together.”

To achieve his goals here, Walters will be picking and choosing which federal law he will—and won’t—go by. With its Plyler v Doe judgment, the Supreme Court in 1982 ruled that a state cannot bar children from attending public school because they are undocumented; a pre-Trump Department of Justice fact sheet says all children are “entitled to equal access to a basic public elementary and secondary education regardless of their actual or perceived race, color, national origin, citizenship, immigration status, or the status of their parents/guardians.”

“School districts that either prohibit or discourage, or maintain policies that have the effect of prohibiting or discouraging, children from enrolling in schools because they or their parents/guardians are not U.S. citizens or are undocumented may be in violation of Federal law,” the DOJ adds.

The Oklahoma school kids facing possible deportation include an estimated 3,000 unaccompanied minors who were settled with sponsors in Oklahoma after arriving in America between 2021 and 2023. Also at risk are children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents—Trump has indicated that he intends to do a little picking and choosing among existing laws of his own by seeking to simply ignore the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which holds that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen.

In the meantime, Walters has announced that Oklahoma schools will begin teaching that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America, in keeping with Trump’s order—and that Alaska’s highest peak, Denali, will be known as Mount McKinley again.

“Our nation’s proud history and heritage is accurately reflected in these updates, and President Trump is correct in making them,” Walters said in a statement issued on Thursday. “I look forward to continuing to work with the Trump administration and make our schools, and America, great again.”

Walters had previously proven his willingness to bring the MAGA agenda into schools back in July of 2023, when he declared that the Tulsa Race Massacre had nothing to do with skin color.

Oklahoma’s schools had been required since 2002 to teach that the massacre was a paroxysm of racist violence in which white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street. Walters, though, had other ideas: “Let’s not tie it to the skin color and say the skin color determined that,” he explained of the massacre during a public forum.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals,” he continued. “Oh, you can, absolutely. Historically you should. This was right, this was wrong. They did this for this reason.”

But in his willfully warped view, that reason cannot include race: “That is critical race theory,” he said. “I reject that.”

In another of his MAGA moves, Walters announced last year that he would place a Bible in every classroom. His office then issued Solicitation No. EV00000, an ostensibly open bid seeking an order of 55,000 Bibles. The hitch (or was it the design?) was that the Bibles had to include the Old and New Testaments and be along with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and come with leather or “leather like” binding, and only two varieties of Bible fit the requirements; both are endorsed by Trump—and both provide him with royalties.

Walters’ office quietly withdrew solicitation of the order last week, which seems like a missed opportunity after all. What’s the line about loving thy neigbhor?