Canvas Cyberattack Disrupts Thousands of Schools During Finals

Republicans are intensifying a campaign to overturn a four-decade-old Supreme Court ruling that guarantees undocumented immigrant children the right to a free public education, arguing that cash-strapped districts should not bear the cost of teaching students who lack legal status. The effort comes as the Trump administration accelerates mass deportations, removes protections for schools as sensitive locations, and creates widespread fear in immigrant communities that directly affects childrens ability to learn.

The 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision established that states cannot deny public schooling to children based on their immigration status, a ruling grounded in the Fourteenth Amendment. For years it has stood as a bulwark against efforts to punish children for their parents decisions. That precedent is now under direct attack. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican also running for state attorney general, declared during a March congressional hearing that the ruling should be discarded. Any amount of illegal immigration in our hospitals, jails, schools, or elsewhere should not be tolerated, Roy said. States should have the ability to curb it.

Over the past year, Republican-led state legislatures have introduced bills to collect data on students immigration status or impose tuition on those without legal papers. While most have failed so far, advocates warn these measures are designed to lay groundwork for a future Supreme Court test. Critics of Plyler v. Doe frame the education of roughly 700,000 undocumented children as an unaffordable burden, insisting limited resources must prioritize American-born students. Immigrant rights groups counter that denying education traps families in cycles of poverty, increases long-term social costs, and contradicts basic American values. Free public schooling, they argue, remains one of the most effective tools for integration and economic mobility.

The debate has sharpened under the current administrations expanded deportation drive. Federal agents have been encouraged to pursue self-deportation through heightened enforcement and fear. In April the government told the Supreme Court it supports lifting previous restrictions on immigration arrests near schools and hospitals. The message is clear: no space is truly safe. This policy shift has ripple effects far beyond courtroom arguments. Teachers and administrators report rising anxiety among students who fear their parents could be detained while dropping them off or picking them up.

In Chicago, where large immigrant communities have already endured months of chaos, the enforcement picture has shifted but not disappeared. Last fall, masked federal agents conducted aggressive raids using tear gas in neighborhoods like La Villita and Back of the Yards. This spring the high-profile spectacles have quieted. Yet an analysis of Deportation Data Project figures obtained by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times shows 580 people were still detained in the Chicago area from January through mid-March. Rapid-response networks that once rushed to protest visible sweeps are now adapting to a less predictable reality.

Mimi Guiracocha, lead organizer with Pilsen Unidos por Nuestro Orgullo, described the current period as the new normal that will likely last years. We have to be always ready and always prepared, she said. Her group is pivoting to training sessions, deploying volunteers to monitor activity, and building systems to quickly share verified information about enforcement sightings. The quieter tactics have not reduced community fear; they have simply forced organizers to refine their surveillance and mutual-aid strategies.

These developments coincide with another crisis hitting the education system. This week hackers known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure, the company behind the widely used Canvas learning platform. The group says it stole data from 8,809 schools worldwide, totaling 280 million records belonging to students, teachers, and staff. Several universities including Harvard and the University of California, Irvine, saw login portals defaced with ransom messages threatening to publish the information unless a settlement is reached by May 12. Instructure confirmed a cybersecurity incident and said it is working with forensic experts, but students have already lost access to assignments, course materials, and discussion boards at critical times in the academic calendar.

The breach exposes how vulnerable school infrastructure has become at the exact moment political forces are trying to shrink who counts as a student deserving of public resources. Undocumented children and their families, already navigating deportation threats, now also confront the possibility that sensitive personal data could be leaked and exploited. Privacy risks are especially acute for mixed-status households worried about drawing attention from immigration authorities.

Education advocates say the dual pressures of cyberattacks and ideological attacks on Plyler v. Doe reveal a deeper pattern: public schools are being asked to do more with less while facing political efforts to exclude some of their most vulnerable pupils. The children in question did not choose to cross borders. Many were brought here as infants or toddlers. Denying them an education, rights groups maintain, is not fiscal responsibility. It is a deliberate choice to punish the innocent and undermine the foundational idea that schooling is a universal right that benefits entire communities.

As state legislatures and federal agencies continue testing the boundaries of Plyler v. Doe, the human stakes are playing out daily in classrooms from Chicago to the Texas border. Students sit beside classmates whose only difference may be a piece of paper their parents lack. The question now is whether courts and the public will allow that distinction to determine who gets to learn.