A 28-year-old woman from Honduras who illegally entered the U.S. attended a Louisiana high school for an entire academic year using fake documents to pose as a 17-year-old, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff said Wednesday.
In the fall of 2021, Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano came to the U.S. to live with her mother, Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarado, 46, who was residing in the country on an expired visa. Serrano-Alvarado allegedly used a fake passport and birth certificate to enroll Gutierrez-Serrano at Hahnville High School in Boutte, about 30 miles west of New Orleans, ABC News reported.
“We were provided basically with a birth certificate from the country of Honduras which indicated that the student in question was 17 years old,” Sheriff Greg Champagne said. “The school system had done a preliminary investigation and they had determined — literally within a day and a half of receiving the tip — that, in fact, the student was overage and determined that it was quite likely that the birth certificate was counterfeit.”
The school district opened an internal investigation four days after the end of the school year upon receiving a tip that a 17-year-old female student might actually be in her mid-20s. Champagne said he saw a photograph of the 28-year-old woman taken by the U.S. government before she was released into the country and said: “She could very easily be taken for a young teenager.”
Gutierrez-Serrano attended the school for the entirety of the 2022-2023 school year to learn English, according to the sheriff.
“She was in school, she minded her own business, she did her schoolwork, she caused no trouble,” Champagne said. “She wanted to learn English.”
Gutierrez-Serrano and her mother were both arrested and charged with one count of injuring public records.
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“Unfortunately, whether it was her decision or her mother’s decision, it’s certainly bad judgment to submit a falsified document to the government,” the sheriff said.
The school district said in a statement that it “will enhance processes to determine the authenticity of enrollment documents for current and future students as well as modify policy and procedures as warranted.”