A school district in Washington state banned all international travel in late April, siding with illegal alien students over citizens and legal immigrants.
Kent School District decided during a school board meeting that all international trips were canceled because border agents might detain and deport illegal alien students on the return trip from a foreign country.
“It comes down to one word. Equity. We recognize, when we were able to look at things, that for years we’ve been offering these trips, but by definition our students who are undocumented can’t cross the border,” administrator Chris Loftis said, according to KOMONews.com.
American kids and legal immigrants in a school district invaded by illegal aliens must sacrifice their educational experiences for illegal aliens, Loftis said, for “the greater good.”
“Sometimes as a culture and a society we have to sacrifice as individuals for the greater good, and we feel that’s the case here,” he added.
The move was especially cruel to students in the high school band at Kentlake High School, who were eagerly looking forward to their traditional trip to play in Victoria, British Columbia and had prepared for the performance all year.
“I do not want to know if someone is undocumented or not. But their feelings should not influence the decision of letting 250 other students go that have been going to this for years,” one student told the Seattle Times.
The annual trip is “the most exciting and important experience in the band program,” said another student, adding: “I feel bad, but I don’t think we should stop the whole trip just because they can’t go. I understand why [the district] did it, but it also drives me nuts because we’ve gone on other trips and had no problem with border stuff.”
Another student exchange program to Japan was also axed by the district. Such trips are not mandatory—no illegal alien is forced to go on them and risk getting detained at the border. And the school district refuses to track or make note of which students are illegal aliens to avoid stigmatizing them, according to the News Tribune:
School Board President Karen DeBruler said everyone on the board understood what was at stake: months of planning and fundraising, and the excitement that goes along with what is often a memorable and inspiring experience for students.
“It’s not fair for them not to go,” she said in an interview Friday. “But things are changing on a very unprecedented basis.” Allowing some students to go would mean that the students who couldn’t go would be “exposed as being undocumented,” she said.
The school district didn’t declare that since some students could not afford to go on certain field trips, they all must be canceled, but immigration is a different story. There are over 135 languages spoken in the district, according to the Seattle Times, and students hail from over 100 foreign countries.