Washington, D.C. (April 3, 2023) - The Center for Immigration Studies releases a case study on the impact of illegal immigration on America’s schools. The study examines the impacts of an influx of an estimated 75,000 illegal immigrants into what were small rural forested communities in Liberty County, Texas. This influx resulted in many stresses and pains of change in the county, but the report highlights the impact on the Cleveland Independent School District (CISD), which experienced a tripling in enrollment due to the influx of foreign-born students – the small county district’s 4,000 student population in 2014 grew to 11,000 in 2022, and is projected to stand at 22,000 by 2026.
The report is adapted from the new book, Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in American History, by Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow. Bensman said, “In Overrun, I make the argument that the struggles of CISD are also happening to greater or lesser degrees at school districts across the country. The CISD case study serves as a warning of afflictions that will impact American school systems for generations as a result of the greatest border crisis in American history.”
Field reporting by Bensman in Liberty County reveals that:
- Sudden huge increases of foreign national student K-12 enrollments (from 3,600 in 2013 to 11,000 in 2022, and a projected 22,000 by 2026) have forced CISD administrators into a frantic program of high-dollar facility expansions requiring repeated public tax-hiking bond elections to afford 60 portable classrooms, eight new schools (with a dozen more in the pipeline), and expansions of all existing ones.
- The influx has also created new crime problems, as “entrepreneur” drug dealers and gangs formed in school hallways where security officers were too few and far between to control situations.
- Performance on standardized testing has also declined, due in part to the fact that many older students arrived illiterate, but must still be mixed into the overall school population. The decline in academic performance is also due to the fact that growth has forced student-per-teacher ratios sky high beyond standards.
- The influx has forced local students and families to flee en masse to other towns and school districts.
The case study goes on to describe a host of other social ailments and impacts on Liberty County caused by the massive influx of illegal immigrant settlers, including widespread clear-cutting of forests for housing, uncontrollable traffic congestion, culture clash, new and more violent crime as cartels move in, and a wholesale change in the rural region’s cherished quality of life.
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