White House spokesman Sean Spicer is pointing to failed immigration policies as a cause of the brutal rape of a 14-year-old Maryland 9th-grader, who was attacked in a restroom at her school by two much older immigrants, at least one of whom was in the country illegally.

Fox News:

"This is a tragic event," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday. "It is horrendous and horrible and disgusting what the girl in Rockville went through.

"From an immigration standpoint, there are so many questions," Spicer said. "[One of the suspects] was 18. How does that person get put into 9th grade?"

Good question, Mr. Spicer.  The facts in this case make one incredulous that school administrators could be so stupid.

The two thugs who attacked the child were 17 and 18 years old but placed in a classroom of 9th-graders.  That's because they were enrolled in a program for non-English-speaking immigrants who had little or no schooling.  The attackers had arrived recently from El Salvador and Nicaragua – two countries far more violent and unstable than the US.

The superintendent of schools in Rockville couldn't understand how the two young men from Central America could commit such a heinous crime:

It is common for that school system to have adults with limited English speaking skills enrolled as freshman, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Smith told Fox 5 DC.

"We have a lot of 18-year-olds in our schools,” Smith said. “Our student was actually in a METS [Multidisciplinary Educational Training and Support] Program for English learners and that is a program we have across the system, and so, it is not a matter of what grade they were in, but the student was in a program for English learners.”

At a press conference Tuesday, Smith took aim at concerns raised by critics over immigration policies.

"While some have made this into an issue on immigration, we serve every student that walks in through every door," he said. "We want to serve them because we know it would not be good for any child to go without an education."

Got that?  The attack was a huge surprise because the animals were in a program.  Not our fault.

The fact that the district serves "every student who walks through every door" is precisely the problem – even though it's lost on the clueless superintendent.  They are placing these young adults in classrooms full of children even though they don't speak English and may have never seen the inside of a classroom.

The METS program of the Montgomery County Public Schools is designed to meet the linguistic and academic needs of English language learners who have had limited or no previous schooling or significant schooling gaps due to interrupted or disrupted education. Students enrolled in the METS program receive instruction in developing English language proficiency and basic literacy and academic skills. Students also receive instruction and support to facilitate adjustment to both the academic and social school environment. The purpose of the METS program is to develop English language proficiency and literacy while providing the instruction and support with academics that will help narrow students' educational gaps and facilitate articulation to non-METS classes.

Superintendent Smith can't seem to make the connection between the district's policies and the attack:

Smith told reporters the 18-year-old student was enrolled in a class alongside younger students because he was there to get the "best services for his needs," adding there are a "great number" of 18-year-old students enrolled in district high schools with younger students. The school district does not do background checks, criminal or immigration, for students entering the system, according to Smith.

"We're not going to paint all students with a broad brush because of a really terrible incident," Smith said.

The "gap" Mr. Smith says he wants to close is more than an academic gap.  There is a chasm between the 9th-grade children and the cultural deficit and disturbed emotional  state of young men from an ultra-violent culture.  The idea that the academic "gap" can be closed by warehousing these violent thugs is loony.

But crazy or not, the policies are not designed to keep children safe.  They were created in service to a political agenda.  For that, school administrators in Rockville should be fired for putting the needs of politics ahead of their primary job of caring for the district's children.