In a recent email, an official with the National Education Association (NEA), a teachers’ union whose state affiliate is the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA), offered educators advice on how to impede enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.

In a Sept. 3 email, Rocío Inclán, the senior director for the Center for Racial and Social Justice at the National Education Association, declared, “As anti-public education politicians and their billionaire backers point their fingers at Black, brown, and LGBTQ kids, they hope we’ll look the other way while they drain public school funding and steal opportunities from our kids.”

But, Inclán wrote, individuals are “fighting mass deportations, ending family separation, and closing the camps.”

The email included a link to an NEA site titled, “Tell Congress: End the Abductions,” which voices opposition to the arrest of illegal immigrants in the United States.

That NEA web page declares that “right-wing politicians” are “terrorizing people based on what they look like or where they come from,” and that the Trump administration is “abducting immigrants and citizens from neighborhoods” by arresting illegal immigrants.

The site includes a template for letters and emails that NEA members can send to their members of Congress. That letter decries “this administration’s use of immigration enforcement to subvert due process and terrorize communities.”

“Jailing families, abducting and disappearing new neighbors and long-standing members of our communities, and enriching private prison corporations, threatens our identity as a nation and the rule of law,” the NEA letter template states.

It also decries “increasing funding for excessive immigration enforcement.”

Inclán’s email also encourages teachers to support the adoption of a “Safe Zones” policy at their school district that can slow and generally impede immigration officials’ investigations at a school site.

Oklahoma schools are required to serve as a middleman by handling dues deductions on behalf of the union when performing payroll functions. That’s in sharp contrast with many other organizations that teachers may join, where the teacher must proactively and independently make dues payments without the involvement of the school employer.

In recent years, Oklahoma lawmakers have considered legislation that would prohibit school districts from making “payroll deductions for any public employee association or organization or professional organization that collectively bargains on behalf of its membership.” Instead, union members would pay their dues separately, just as they typically do for most other personal bills.

Photo credit: National Education Association