Published March 21, 2017 | FoxNews.com
Failed federal policy has placed adult illegal immigrants in public school classrooms next to children, say immigration reform advocates, who are pointing to the rape of a 14-year-old Maryland girl allegedly by two suspects, ages 17 and 18.
The horrific attack Thursday, in a Rockville, Md., high school bathroom, grimly underscores the challenge of enrolling upper-teen illegal immigrants with poor language skills in public schools. The suspects in the attack were both in ninth grade, as was their victim. One, identified by police as Henry E. Sanchez-Milian, had been caught crossing the Mexican border just months ago.
“The surge of Central American kids has become a significant problem in many of the school districts where they are allowed to re-settle,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. “It’s not uncommon for older kids to be placed in the lower high school grades with much younger kids, because they usually have had only a few years of schooling in their home country.”
Sanchez-Milian, a native of Guatemala, and Jose O. Montano, 17, from El Salvador, were charged with first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offense. Court records say they dragged the girl into a men’s bathroom, where they allegedly violently raped, sodomized and forced her to perform oral sex in a stall.
It is common for that school system to have adults with limited English speaking skills enrolled as freshman, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Smith told Fox 5 DC.
"We have a lot of 18-year-olds in our schools,” Smith said. “Our student was actually in a METS [Multidisciplinary Educational Training and Support] Program for English learners and that is a program we have across the system, and so, it is not a matter of what grade they were in, but the student was in a program for English learners.”
