Ranking Member Raskin’s Opening Statement at Subcommittee Hearing on Republicans’ Plan to Kick Kids Out of Schools
Washington, D.C. (March 18, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at a Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government hearing examining how Republicans want to kick kids out of schools—another front in the Trump Administration’s ongoing war on children.
Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.
WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government
“Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe”
March 18, 2026
Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses for being here. And thanks for these wonderful kids in the front row who are keeping me very entertained.
I want to start by invoking Tom Paine, who was an undocumented immigrant who came to this land in 1774, two years before the revolution and wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that ignited the American Revolution. And he said that this land, if it lives up to its ideals and its promise, would become an “asylum to humanity,” he said. Not an insane asylum, but a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious and political, intellectual and economic persecution from all over the world. Also in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson, who was a descendant of a long line of undocumented immigrants both on his mother’s side and his father’s side to the country, said that education would be central to democratic self-government and to the protection of liberty in our country. He said that a nation cannot be both ignorant and free. He said it was an impossibility.
In the 20th Century, the Supreme Court affirmed that public education is a constitutional commitment in America for all children who are here. In Plyler v. Doe, the Court held that denying children access to a public education based on their immigration status would violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan found that excluding undocumented children from public education would impose a lifetime of hardship. He said something like what the Constitution calls a “taint of blood” or a “bill of attainder,” a hereditary punishment for something over which the child had absolutely no control.
Plyler did not place an undue financial burden on America. Rather, it has paid big dividends for our country. A recent analysis measured the costs and benefits of this decision and found that children who were able to go to school thanks to Plyler have contributed to the tune of billions of dollars more in state and local income taxes than the costs of their education. And of course, their classes were going to be happening anyway.
Plyler has strengthened the workforce by allowing three quarters of adults who got an education thanks to Plyler to work in occupations that require a high school degree. And it’s also improved public health by making sure that every child in America gets the appropriate vaccinations. So is there anyone who really thinks that America would be stronger as a country if all of the kids who got an education because of Plyler v. Doe had been forced to stay home, or to stay in the streets during the day when their parents were working?
Well, in order to distract America from the Iran war—which is now costing between $1 and $2 billion a day, and which has already cost 13 Americans their lives in more than a thousand Iranians their lives, including 175 schoolchildren who perished in a bomb explosion at an all-girls school in order to distract America from the Trump Administration’s massive cover up of the Epstein files and the billion dollar global trafficking conspiracy of young women, teenage girls and children—our colleagues want to revisit a 44-year-old Supreme Court decision, with the aim of kicking tens of thousands of kids out of their classes and out of their schools.
Well, the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign is already succeeding in denying kids, both non-citizens and citizens alike, access to school and education. In a survey of 693 educators across the country, when asked whether federal immigration enforcement efforts were affecting students, 24% reported reduced student attendance at school and increased distraction or disengagement in class, 18% said reduced attendance is leading to declining student performance, of course, and 50% stated that the children in their schools have expressed great anxiety and fear about what’s taking place in their communities. The harm is not concentrated solely in the cities most under siege either. West of the Twin Cities in Willmar, Minnesota, more than 1 in 4 students started missing classes after one student with legal residency was detained and held in custody for several days, and another student, who’s a U.S. citizen, was stopped by ICE outside a district learning center. The school superintendent said, “families of our black and brown students feared profiling and family separation even as legal residents. White families reported keeping children home due to anxieties about potential armed law enforcement activity taking place inside the schools. And even when kids are showing up, immigration enforcement actions are dramatically affecting academic performance.”
Using data from a large urban school district in Florida, one of the ten biggest in the country, researchers found that the recent surge reduced test scores for both U.S.-born and foreign-born Spanish speaking students, especially in higher poverty areas. It is hard to study, to learn, to think, to do homework or to take exams when you are filled with fear and dread and anxiety.
This reign of terror is part of the Administration’s relentless campaign against children right now. In July last year, Trump signed into law his Big Beautiful Bill, which included the largest cuts to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In our history, over 37 million children rely on Medicaid and CHIP to get health care, and nearly 15 million children rely on SNAP to get adequate nutrition.
While denying children access to health care, the Administration is also making it harder for kids to stay healthy in the first place. After a confirmed 2,144 measles cases across 44 states in 2025, the U.S. stands to lose its measles-free designation with this self-inflicted wound administered by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The country is already on track to soar past last year’s total measles cases, with more than 1,300 cases across 31 states already confirmed as of March 12th. And of course, Mr. Chairman, Texas has been particularly hard hit. The Secretary of Health and Human Services fired all 17 members of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which provides recommendations for immunization in the U.S, and drop the number of recommended routine childhood vaccines, putting children again at risk of contracting preventable diseases.
The Administration has gutted the Department of Education, which ensures nearly 26 million low-income students and 7.5 million students with disabilities get meaningful access to educational opportunity, and has repeatedly threatened funding for Head Start, which provides childcare and early education to millions of low-income children.
Every year, I would urge our colleagues to abandon this determination to make life harder for children in our country, and instead join us in passing policy to deliver for America’s kids. Together, we can make the Child Tax Credit permanent. Instead of making tax cuts permanent for the nation’s billionaires, we could expand access to health care and support for nutrition for kids in need. We could protect the Department of Education to make sure kids in America get equal access to a quality education. We could take action to, once and for all, address the leading cause of death for children under 18 in the United States: the epidemic of gun violence in our country. For more than a decade now, Americans have strongly supported common sense gun safety reform to ensure that guns stay out of hands of the people who do the most harm. Yet no matter how many children lose their lives to gun violence, our colleagues maintain their oath to the gun lobby and the absolute myth that the Second Amendment prevents reasonable gun safety legislation. It does not.
The Democrats on this Committee take supporting and protecting every child in America seriously. I hope our colleagues will join us.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.