TDSB to stop booking school trips to U.S., citing Trump travel ban

Toronto:– The Toronto District School Board says it will stop booking official student trips to the U.S. until further notice, citing new border restrictions that may prevent some students from entering the country.
TDSB Director of Education John Malloy says that already arranged trips —involving as many as 900 students on 24 separate trips — will be allowed to go ahead but no more travel will be arranged to the United States.
“We do not make this decision lightly, but given the uncertainty of these new travel restrictions and when they may come into effect, if at all, we strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border,” Malloy wrote in a decision posted on the board’s website.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration announced they would put in place a ban on travel into the United States from citizens of Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya, for a period of 120 days.
Large portions of this ban were struck down by federal court judges in Hawaii and Maryland, saying it would not make the United States safer and parts of it were in violation of the U.S. constitution.
If the ban somehow overcomes legal challenges and comes into full effect, all TDSB travel, even that which was already arranged, will be cancelled, Malloy said Thursday.
Although senior U.S. security officials have told Canada throughout the ban process that Canadians would not affected, there have been several publicized cases of legal Canadian citizens — most often from Quebec — inexplicably barred from entering the United States, some of whom were on school-sponsored trips.
Malloy says that if a TDSB student on any of the already-scheduled U.S. trips is denied entry, the trip will effectively be cancelled.
“Should students with the appropriate documentation be denied entry to the U.S. for no legitimate reason, the entire trip will return to Toronto and will not proceed.”
So far, a school board in Windsor-Essex as well as Ryerson University has cancelled student travel to the U.S., citing similar concerns.