Nearly One-Quarter Of U.S. Public School Enrollment Could Be Anchor Babies
Joy Pullmann
A few simple calculations indicate that as much as one-quarter of U.S. public school enrollment could be anchor babies, meaning children with at least one parent illegally present in the United States. This alone amounts to at least $145.6 billion in public resources diverted from U.S. citizens every year.
Here’s the math. In April, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 17 percent of school-age children, or nine million kids, in the United States are children of at least one illegal alien. The New York Times has reported on the estimate. Some of these children are also foreign citizens, while some were born in the United States. Under a longstanding court misinterpretation, being born in the United States currently confers U.S. citizenship. Almost no other developed countries confer citizenship solely by birth location.
That’s already one in six kids in the United States who are legally subject to deportation to continue living with their parents. If you also assume that all of this population attends public schools, the percentage is more than 17. That’s because only 80 percent of U.S. kids attend a traditional public school, according to 2024 figures from EdChoice.
There were 50 million school-age kids in the United States in 2024, according to ChildStats.gov (adding in the five-year-olds to match the anchor baby age range and assuming there were 4 million of them, an equal age distribution among the 0-5 figure). Eighty percent of 50 is 40, so 40 million of the total 50 million U.S. kids went to public schools in 2024. Nine million anchor babies out of that total 40 million public-school attendees suggests 22.5 percent of U.S. public school enrollment could be anchor babies.
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https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/05/nearly-one-quarter-of-u-s-public-school-enrollment-could-be-anchor-babies/
