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GOP bill would require Tennessee public schools to check student immigration status

The amended bill no longer has provisions to allow public schools to charge tuition or disenroll students without legal immigration status

A controversial bill allowing Tennessee public schools to charge tuition for immigrant children has been revived in an amended form to instead require K-12 districts to gather student immigration status data and report it to the state’s education department.

As amended, the bill (HB073/SB0836) by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican, would no longer allow public schools to collect tuition from students without legal status, nor give the option of disenrolling children whose families could not pay.

Instead, what remains of the original bill that stalled last year on concerns it could jeopardize more than $1.1 billion in federal education funding is a provision requiring schools to collect and report student immigration status, in aggregate and minus identifying information, to the state. Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, is the bill’s co-sponsor.

“This amendment is literally a data portion where every school will request that information — their residency, their identity, that type of thing — and then report back to us…on how many students are in our schools that are illegally present in the United States,” Lamberth told a House subcommittee Wednesday.

“And, then, we can take whatever action down the road that this body would choose to take,” he said.

Lamberth did not detail what those future actions might entail. Individuals who testified before the committee laid out concerns that the data, even in aggregate, could provide a roadmap to federal immigration officials seeking to target enforcement activities in communities with high concentrations of immigrant students. The bill has not yet advanced in the state Senate.

Just as it did last year, the bill drew a crowd of protestors who heckled and booed as soon as the Republican-dominated subcommittee successfully advanced the bill Wednesday.

Cries of “shame, shame” drowned out Republican Rep. Ryan Williams, the committee chair, who swiftly declared a recess and ordered state troopers to clear the room.

The bill is among more than three dozen targeting immigrants that have been introduced by Tennessee Republicans this year, some crafted in close collaboration with the White House after a series of meetings between Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican, and Stephen Miller, a key immigration policy advisor to President Donald Trump.

A separate bill winding its way through the legislative process would require public schools, universities and other public-serving agencies to report immigration status.

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