Georgia’s radical anti-immigration law has already cost the state’s farmers millions of dollars in lost crops, and studies show it will continue to threaten the state’s economy in years to come. Now, another anti-immigrant policy might cost the University of Georgia football team one of its top incoming players.

Chester Brown, a high school senior in Hinesville, Georgia decided in July that he would play his college football at Georgia. Brown was so excited to play for the Bulldogs that he had the date of his commitment tattooed on his arm. But last week, Brown, the son of Samoan immigrants, abruptly announced that he was withdrawing his commitment, a decision that was likely due to an anti-immigrant policy adopted by the Georgia state college and university system in 2010, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

However, a variety of people with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to the AJC on Tuesday that Brown’s change of heart was because his admissions application to UGA was rejected because of a controversial Board of Regents policy that was adopted in October 2010.

That policy…states that an undocumented student can’t take the seat of an otherwise academically qualified Georgia resident who has been turned away because of capacity constraints.

The policy that may ultimately keep Brown from playing football at Georgia states, “A person who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible for admission to any University System institution which, for the two most recent academic years, did not admit all academically qualified applicants (except for cases in which applicants were rejected for non-academic reasons).” It was instituted in 2010 after the state Board of Regents, which oversees state colleges and universities, found that less than a hundredth of a percent of students — 521 of roughly 311,000 — were undocumented. Within the 511 was a “smaller subset” of students that were considered “illegal,” according to the AJC.

Brown’s mother “insists that he was born in the United States,” but the family lacks documentation to prove it. There is, however, still a chance Brown could realize his dream of becoming a Bulldog. His high school principal has been in contact with both admissions officials and immigration attorneys in attempts to help Brown gain admission.

Parents in Norcross, Georgia blasted school officials at Beaver Ridge Elementary School after teachers gave third graders a math worksheet that used examples of slavery in word problems. Following the uproar, district officials said the school’s principal will work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons, but that didn’t go far enough for parents who called for an apology and diversity training for teachers at Beaver Ridge, where a majority of the students are minorities.

Examples on the worksheet included “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?” Officials said teachers were trying to incorporate history into the math lesson as part of a cross-curricular activity based on a book the students had read about abolitionist Frederick Douglass. “Clearly, they did not do as good of a job as they should have done,” district spokeswoman Sloan Roach told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Roach said the school’s principal, Jose DeJesus, was collecting the assignments so they wouldn’t be circulated. She said the teachers were not intentionally trying to offend the students with the questions.

“It was just a poorly written question,” Roach said.

Under district policy, the worksheet should have been reviewed before being handed out to students, but that process was not followed in this situation. District officials said they would work with math teachers to come up with more appropriate questions. [...]

Parents told Channel 2 Action News, a reporting partner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that they were shocked that the assignment was dispersed to their children.

“It kind of blew me away,” Christopher Braxton, the father of a Beaver Ridge student, told Channel 2. “I was furious. … Something like this shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade.”

Braxton told FOX 5 that the questions were “at best, the questions were callous and, at worst, racist.” Roach said the questions would not be used again.

She told the AJC that she was not sure if the teachers and staff at Beaver Ridge Elementary had received diversity training recently. At the school, 62 percent of the students are Hispanic or Latino, 24 percent are black or African-American, and 5 percent are white, with 87 percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunch.

A custody fight in Georgia is illustrating the biases of a foster care system that some say routinely subverts the parental rights of undocumented and non-English speaking mothers and fathers:

Ovidio and Domitina Mendez’s lost their five children to foster care when the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services arrived at their home claimed the kids were malnourished. The couple, who are both undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, says they did everything the child welfare agency asked them to do to get their kids back. But three years later, the children are still in foster care with strangers. Why? Because they are undocumented immigrants who speak Spanish, according to advocates.

A recent study by the Applied Research Center revealed that at least 5,100 children are languishing in America’s foster care system because their immigrant parents were detained or deported. But the report also found that even when undocumented parents are not detained or deported, they face bias in the child welfare system as a result of cultural and language discrimination.

For instance, at the June hearing that terminated the Mendez’s parental rights, they were peppered with seemingly irrelevant questions about their English-speaking ability and immigration status. “Describe for the court why even three years after [the children went into the state’s custody] you cannot speak English without an interpreter,” asked Bruce Kling, special assistant attorney general for Whitfield County Department of Family and Children’s Service.

The state also argued that the Mendezes’ should not regain custody because, as undocumented immigrants, they could not attain driver’s licenses and therefore couldn’t transport their children. ARC found that many county child welfare departments give this justification for why undocumented parents can’t be trusted as caregivers.

The suggestion that undocumented immigrants are unfit parents (usually for reasons related to their poverty) is often used to separate them from their children. But children then remain in foster care because of the barriers that undocumented mothers and fathers face in trying to regain custody. Parents’ undocumented status also works against them by preventing them from accessing state services that would enable them to better provide for their children.