The Border
U.S. immigration officials said no students were turned away at the border on the first day of a crackdown aimed at stopping Mexican children who attend public schools in San Diego County without paying tuition.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced Friday that it would begin checking to see if Mexican schoolchildren had the proper visas to attend school in the United States.
INS spokesman Rudy Murillo said Monday, the first day of the checks, that he “was not aware of any cases where anybody was turned back.” Immigration inspectors found many more students using the special visas, he said.
“We assume that the majority of them use the student visas to attend parochial and private schools in the United States,” Murillo said.
However, INS officials said they had no way of determining how many of the students attend public and parochial schools. U.S. citizens and permanent U.S. residents who live in Tijuana are not required to obtain the student visas.
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