Posted on 09/30/2005 6:25:45 AM PDT by devane617
It's a premise worthy of Hollywood: An adult goes undercover as a high school student. Drew Barrymore did it in the movie Never Been Kissed and it was considered cute. Johnny Depp did it to catch teenage criminals in the TV show 21 Jump Street and it was edgy.
But for a 27-year-old illegal immigrant who spent a month acting the part of an 18-year-old at Pasco County's Mitchell High School, the scheme led to arrest and likely deportation. He tells authorities the only reason he posed was to get a good education. It's a story more tragic than sinister, if true.
But what's to keep an adult with less virtuous aims from constructing a similar scheme and taking a seat in algebra class next to your son or daughter?
Hardly anything, say school officials.
"The system is willing to endure the potential of a few sinister people getting in in order to not interfere with the good of providing a free and appropriate education" to children, said Dennis Alfonso, attorney for Pasco County schools. "Thank God he wasn't going there to find some fresh stock of children to molest."
Although schools require documentation in order to enroll, educators are trained not to treat students with questionable or incomplete documentation any differently than other students.
In fact, it's the law.
In 1982, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plyler vs. Doe that undocumented children and young adults have the same right as U.S. citizens and permanent residents to attend public schools. Schools may not deny admission to any student on the basis of lack of documentation. They cannot press them to verify residency, provide Social Security numbers or document parental immigration status.
"It's not like we're knocking ourselves out to put safeguards in place so we don't educate people," said Stephen Hegarty, spokesman for Hillsborough County schools. "We're not Immigration and Naturalization."
In the case of this week's Pasco County arrest, Josue Oswaldo Ramirez-Mejia enrolled at Mitchell High on Aug. 25, providing an altered birth certificate and changed transcripts, according to the Pasco Sheriff's Office. A woman accompanied him claiming to be his mother. She turned out to be his sister, a school official said.
Ramirez-Mejia's true identity began to unravel Tuesday after a student found his wallet in the physical education area of the school and turned it over to a teacher. A Guatemalan identification card inside showed his real birth date as Jan. 3, 1978 - 11 years earlier than that listed in the birth certificate he provided.
He was sitting in the Land O'Lakes jail Thursday night, held in lieu of $5,000 bail on a charge of uttering a forged instrument. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Pam McCullough said the agency began deportation proceedings for Ramirez-Mejia on Wednesday evening. That means that if he is released from Pasco jail, ICE will place him in police custody once again until he posts a second bail and officials decide whether he will be deported.
Bernadette Osso, 36, whose 15-year-old daughter attends Mitchell, said as soon as she heard the story on the news Wednesday, she began to fret. Although part of her empathized with Ramirez-Mejia's desire for an education, she couldn't help but wonder what the consequences might have been if his intentions had been dangerous.
"We were trying to figure out what his real motivation was," said Osso. She and her husband worry about their daughter possibly dating an 18-year-old, let alone running the school halls with someone more than a decade older than her.
Ramirez-Mejia raised no flags while he was registered as a senior at the school, officials said. He took an English language class, among others . But when he first boarded a school bus near the $350-per-month Holiday apartment he shared with his brother, the driver actually told him he was too old to board the bus, district Transportation Director Mike Park said. When Ramirez-Mejia produced a bus pass issued by the district, she let it go.
Ric Mellin, Mitchell's incoming principal, sent a letter home to parents Thursday in an effort to calm their shaken nerves: "At no time, do we believe that your child, or any of our students, were in harms way by his presence in our school," he wrote.
But it still leaves unresolved how such an event might have been prevented. How common, after all, is it that someone actually tries to find a way to attend a high school? School officials, law enforcement and immigration experts this week said Ramirez-Mejia's case was the first one like it they'd heard about.
"I don't know what to do about a 27-year-old who wants to get an education," Alfonso, the Pasco schools attorney, said.
Ramirez-Mejia would have been able to legally attend the district's adult education programs without altering any documents. It was an option Maximo Ramirez-Mejia said his brother didn't know about.
Although the incident highlights the need for schools to be vigilant as they review records, Pasco's assistant superintendent Jim Davis said, officials' hands technically are still tied.
"There are some questions you can't ask," he said.
-- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.
It wouldn't be such a "happy hunting ground" if schools weren't handing out condoms and WERE advising kids to abstain from sex.
"We were trying to figure out what his real motivation was," said Osso. She and her husband worry about their daughter possibly dating an 18-year-old, let alone running the school halls with someone more than a decade older than her."
That was my first thought as well.
I can't believe a criminal background check was not done. According to yesterday's story, this guy is a felon.
All the girls in his class were probably 17 and 18 anyway.
Think they'll make him pay back the tax dollars he used up?
That article is here.
I'd like to know why his brother hasn't been arrested for aiding and abetting an illegal alien.
Amazing. An illegal, self-motivated amigo attempts to learn English and assimilate into our culture but in the process gets charged with all sorts of nefarious crimes and will probably be deported .... yet illegal amigo rapists, murderers, drug dealers, gang members whose only skill is crime get to remain here.
There are lots of teenage felons in school, it is a condition of their probation, dont'cha know
ALL of these scumbags need to be deported after they pay the $5000.00 fine. No money? Work on a jail sponsored road gang until they can save it up.
We have to make it hurt worse to be an illegal here than to be legal in whatever their hell hole country is.
Plus the other taxpayer funds he has been receiving.
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