Ted Cruz questions Supreme Court ruling ordering free education for immigrant kids

Published: March 9, 2015 10:47 am
Todd J. Gillman

WASHINGTON – Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that the Supreme Court probably made the wrong decision in 1982 when it ruled that public schools must provide free education to children who are in the country illegally.

“There’s a strong argument to say that it was [a mistake],” Cruz told a conservative radio host in Des Moines during a campaign visit to Iowa.

WHO host Jan Mickelson, an immigration hardliner, peppered Cruz with questions about Plyler v. Doe, a Texas case in which the justices ruled 5-4 that states must provide public education for students in the country illegally. Jim Plyler was the school superintendent in Tyler, and Doe referred to families living and working there when Texas cut funding for students living in the country illegally.

Mickelson argued that states should now defy the court and ignore the precedent, and prodded Cruz to embrace the idea.

The senator, a top student at Harvard Law School and former clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, stepped carefully. But he agreed that the court got it wrong.

“Plyler v. Doe as a legal matter is certainly binding Supreme Court precedent,” Cruz said. “You can have a theoretical argument about the role of the Supreme Court. But I do think there is value in the principle of stare decisis, which is a Latin term for things which are decided. There is value in legal precedent.”

That said, he added, the court probably had no constitutional basis for forcing states to educate children in the country illegally.

“There is a very strong argument that the 14th Amendment doesn’t require that,” Cruz said.

Mickelson didn’t sound entirely satisfied, and he again pressed Cruz to embrace a “nullification” tactic. Cruz parried that such efforts won’t work without political victories, because federal courts will keep enforcing Supreme Court rulings.

“We need to actually win these fights. So I’m focused on how do we repeal every word of Obamacare. How do we stop illegal immigration. Plyler v. Doe becomes a lot less relevant if you don’t have 12 million people living here illegally because we’re securing the borders… and we have a legal immigration system that works properly,” he said.

Mickelson: “I would love to be on the other side of this argument in the Supreme Court.”

Cruz: “I’m not sure you and I would have a whole lot of disagreement.”

Mickelson’s hardline views on immigration are no secret. At the Iowa Freedom Summit on Jan. 25, attended by Cruz and many other potential GOP presidential contenders, Mickelsen compared young immigrants brought to the country illegally (DREAMers) to people trying to crash a hotel breakfast and called them “illegal gate crashers.”

Last fall, the Federation for American Immigration Reform – a group that pushes for tighter immigration policies – estimated that it would cost states $761 million to provide K-12 education for the 37,000 Central American child migrants released to relatives in the United States during the first seven months of 2014, Texas could spend $77.7 million to educate 5,280 children, FAIR estimated.

Immigrant advocate groups called the estimate inflated (FAIR assumed costs to educate these migrants would be 75 percent higher than for average students, due to limited English proficiency and other issues) and argued that whatever the true cost, the value of educating any children living in the United States is justified.

Cruz was at the Iowa Agriculture Summit on Saturday with other GOP candidates. He caused something of a stir by standing by his rejection of the Renewable Fuel Standard, a federal mandate that boosts demand for corn-based ethanol in gasoline.

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The US Supreme Court absolutely got it wrong. They often get it wrong because they rule on the evidence and arguments presented and whoever handled that case didn't do it well enough to convince the Justices there was a valid reason to exclude them, beyond the obvious reason that they weren't legal residents of the school district and not under US jurisdiction to qualify for benefits. Someone on the other side obviously argued the children were innocent victims of illegal alien law breaking criminals, and likely threw some silly phrase around like "the children aren't responsible for the sins of their fathers", and our side was too unprepared to counter with "the citizens of the US aren't responsible for those either". Americans are not responsible for educating foreign children or foreign adults or anyone for that matter who isn't a US citizen or a legal permanent resident. It has nothing to do with "sin". It has nothing to do with "fathers", it has to do with the individual regardless of age who isn't supposed to be in our country, and the only obligation that exists with regards to them is a ....deportation. That's the law, that's the will of the people, that's the American Way, and that means you can't stay and we don't have to pay for your education.

Now, in the ironic lack of wisdom shown in that case by the US Supreme Court, the message is pretty clear, if you don't want to pay for their education, then you best be hiking their butts out of the country.

I posted a couple maybe 3 weeks ago that Texas should file another suit to challenge Plyler vs Doe, revisit that issue and get it overturned based on the new data that is available that shows our public school system and the resources available to fund it are not equipped to educate foreign students in the K-12 age group and efforts to do so are actually violating the civil rights of American students. They can show the decline in education results as proof-positive that the attention given to these illegal alien students has robbed American students not only of their civil rights but an educational system they are guaranteed by State Constitutions.

This mess started in Texas so Texas needs to fix it.