MIDDLESEX COUNTY, NJ. (THECOUNT) — Hyejeong Shin has been identified as the 29-year-old woman arrested after she used a forged birth certificate to enroll as a freshman at a Middlesex County, New Jersey high school.
Shin, who spent four days posing “as a juvenile” student at New Brunswick High School, was arrested on a single charge of third-degree providing a false government document with intent to verify age or identity.
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According to the New Brunswick Police Department, Shin is accused of presenting a fake birth certificate to the New Brunswick Board of Education in an attempt to attend public high school classes.
As the department noted, New Jersey state statutes, coupled with recommendations from the New Jersey Department of Education, require schools “to immediately enroll unaccompanied children, even in the absence of records normally required for enrollment,” whether those children can immediately provide proof of guardianship or not, reports CBSNY.
“Proof of guardianship is not necessary to immediately enroll an unaccompanied child or youth,” New Brunswick police said in Wednesday’s news release.
“Although a school district might request documents such as a birth certificate to verify a child’s age, a school district may not prevent or discourage a child, including an unaccompanied child, from enrolling in or attending school because he or she lacks a birth certificate or has records that indicate a foreign place of birth, such as a foreign birth certificate.”
The administration at New Brunswick High School circulated a letter explaining Shin’s arrest and the accusations against her, which also contained her picture, CBS New York reported, adding that she had only attended classes with other students for four days.
“She was pretending to be a freshman, which is more surprising because I don’t believe she looks like a freshman,” one student at New Brunswick High School told the station. Another student told CBS New York that Shin sent text messages to several classmates asking them to “hang out.”
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Geo quick facts: Middlesex County is a county located in north-central New Jersey, United States. In 2019, the Census Bureau estimated the county’s population at 825,062, making it the state’s second-most populous county, an increase of 4.1% from 809,858 in the 2010 census – Wikipedia.