A Louisiana high school is reviewing its policies after a 28-year-old illegal alien allegedly posed as a minor to attend classes.
The illegal is facing a criminal charge for a scheme in which she allegedly attended Hahnville High School as if she were 17 years old, according to ABC News.
Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano attended a year of classes as a ninth-grade student at the public school, according to St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne.
Both Gutierrez-Serrano and her mother, Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarado, 46, are facing a charge of injuring public records after their arrest this week.
Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarado (left) and her 28-year-old daughter Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano were arrested in St. Charles Parish after officials say the mom used a false passport and birth certificate to enroll her daughter at Hahnville High as a 17-year-old.@FOX8NOLA pic.twitter.com/bWA5AA4tfD
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Serrano-Alvarado is accused of using a fake passport and Honduran birth certificate to enroll her daughter in classes at the high school in the New Orleans suburb of Boutte.
Serrano-Alvarado had resided in the United States for “a number of years” after her immigration visa expired, according to the sheriff, per ABC News.
Gutierrez-Serrano entered the country in the fall of 2021, Champagne said, adding that she “wanted to become proficient in English and perhaps further her education, which I think we can all be sympathetic with.”
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“Unfortunately,” Champagne said, “whether it was her decision or her mother’s decision, it’s certainly bad judgment to submit a falsified document to the government.”
Gutierrez-Serrano evaded alerting suspicions while attending the high school roughly a decade too late, the sheriff said, according to CNN.
“She was in school, she minded her own business, she did her schoolwork,” Champagne said.
“She caused no trouble, she was not a disciplinary problem.”
The sheriff also said that, based on a 2021 photo, Gutierrez-Serrano could “very easily be taken for a young teenager,” ABC News reported.
Authorities were alerted to the possibility of an adult woman attending high school classes via a tip from someone who was not identified.
The school is revising its policies after the alleged fraud.
The St. Charles Parish school district is acting to “enhance processes to determine the authenticity of enrollment documents for current and future students as well as modify policy and procedures as warranted,” according to ABC.
The federal government estimates that over 1 million people — many of them illegal aliens — are impersonating U.S citizens through false use of their Social Security numbers, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
