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A 28-year-old woman from Louisiana was arrested for allegedly posing as a 17-year-old to enroll in high school. St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said that Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarado, 46, used a fake passport and birth certificate to register her daughter, Martha Jessenia Gutierrez-Serrano, as a student at Hahnville High School in Boutte.
Martha attended the school for an entire year. During that time, she did not participate in any extracurricular activities and had no disciplinary issues.
"She was in school, she minded her own business, she did her schoolwork, she caused no trouble," the sheriff said.
Authorities launched an investigation after receiving a tip that Martha was not a teenager but was actually a woman in her mid to late 20s. They discovered that she used fake documents to enroll in the school.
Champagne said that Marta had been in the United States for several years but had an expired visa. Her daughter arrived in the United States in 2021. He said that Martha was enrolled in the school so she could learn to speak English.
She "wanted to become proficient in English and perhaps further her education, which I think we can all be sympathetic with," Champagne said. "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 two women were taken into custody and were each charged with one count of injuring public records.