In a violation of city regulations, New York City school officials are asking students about their immigration status when they fill out lunch forms and other school-related applications.
These serious allegations violating the City Charter Executive Order 41 and the Chancellor’s Regulation A-101, both of which protect the confidentiality of a child’s immigration status when enrolling in the public school system, were revealed in a survey that was carried out between April 2004 and January 2006 by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), an organization working for immigrant rights, and with assistance from the Urban Justice Center community development project. The survey’s results have already been distributed to N.Y.C. Education Department officials, however the Chancellor’s office would not comment on the report.
Monami Maulik, DRUM’s executive director said that her organization was going to hold the Department of Education’s (DOE) feet to the fire, because they were not doing enough to solve the problem.
“We don’t think that the situation is improving,” Maulik said.
A year after the survey was conducted many of the students who were asked about their immigration status contacted the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a lawsuit.
In addition to being asked about their immigration status, the students who participated in the survey said that they were heckled by NYPD officers in front of their school almost everyday.
Rakib, a student who participated in the survey, mentioned the following in his written statement: “I don’t think that asking for an identity card is necessarily wrong, but it may create a dangerous situation for those who don’t have citizenship status and that’s sort of mentally painful, something which can’t be described in words.”
Rakib also mentioned that in 2005, a 16-year-old female student was arrested and deported back to Bangladesh because she was suspected of having terrorist ties.
Of the people surveyed: 51 percent of the 662 said that they were being harassed regularly by police officers and school administrators; 85 percent said that they were harassed because of their race, nationality, religious belief or immigration; and 45 percent said that they had been questioned by the school authorities and police about their immigration status.
Similarly, employees of hospitals, welfare and other city agencies are also being questioned about their immigration status. When high school seniors want to fill out application forms for admittance into any college, the question of immigration status resurfaces. One student who participated in the survey said, “School officials wanted to see my passport and when I went to be admitted into the school, they kept the photocopy of my passport.”
In the survey, South Asians included students from Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Furthermore, students from Africa, Britain, Fiji, Guyana and Trinidad expressed that they were facing similar problems in some schools.
DRUM officials are demanding that school administrators put a stop to such practices. They say that immigrants have been contributing to the development of the United States since the 1600s when they first set foot in this country.
The survey report mentioned that in the last 10 years, the number of South Asians in New York has increased by 111 percent. Again, a large section of this community resides in Queens.
Moreover, Kumar Hiralal, who is a graduate of Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, said that just before his graduation, school safety agents routinely stopped him at school and asked him why he was carrying a cell phone. At one stage, he was handcuffed in a special room in the Dean’s office. Later, he was taken to a nearby police precinct, where he was accused of hitting a school safety agent. After spending one night in jail, the judge ordered his release.
Last December, students at Hillcrest High School protested the terrible treatment by school safety agents. The voluntary organizations, DRUM and NYCLU, jointly arranged a rally and demanded that appropriate steps be taken by the New York Police Department and New York City Department of Education to discipline the school guards.
