If Plyler is the target, children are collateral damage

"Whether the critics are correct in arguing that the law has created a “chilling effect,” inducing families to pull their children out of school, is harder to measure than it may seem. While daily absences by Hispanic students ranged as high as 5,143, or 15 percent of the Hispanic student population, they had dropped to 1,230 the day before the provision was blocked, said a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education (on a normal day, she said, around 1,000 absences can be expected). Statewide data has not been compiled as to how many students have fully withdrawn, though interviews in several districts suggest that number could be in the hundreds.  Several parents in Shelby County who are in the country illegally said in interviews that they were less frightened about Section 28 than about other parts of the law. Their children were all United States citizens by birth, they said, and school officials had so far been reassuring.  The antagonism in schools now, they said, is mainly coming from other children.  “A little girl in my daughter’s class asked when she was going to go to Mexico because she was illegal,” said a 27-year-old woman who gave her name as Arelly, the mother of a fourth grader. “I think they hear their parents talking.”" - New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011.