A California school district is naming its new school after an illegal immigrant after board members chose the man over President Barack Obama, Medal of Freedom recipient Grace Hopper, and a local official with decades of service to the community.

The Mountain View Whisman School District solicited input in naming a new school on North Whisman Road that will open in 2019 for grades K-5, but documents show the board selected a candidate it suggested at the start of the process: activist Jose Antonio Vargas.

A slideshow of the selection process shows board members suggested Vargas, who was smuggled into the U.S. from the Philippines when he was 12, then held an “online community conversation” in March 2018 through ThoughtExchange asking the community to weigh in.

The effort was marketed through “schools’ newsletters, superintendent’s newsletters, website, social media and direct mail postcard to 5,000 residents of the Slater neighborhood,” according to the presentation.

The online conversation identified five criterion locals want the school name to reflect, including diversity and inclusion, leadership and core values, community oriented, significance in education, and the school’s values.

Suggested names included Gail Urban Moore, a district trustee for nearly three decades; computer pioneer and World War II veteran Grace Hopper; Ruth Clouse Chance, a philanthropist from California; Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Vargas, a former MVWSD student who won a Pulitzer-prize with a team of reporters at The Washington Post covering the Virginia Tech massacre.

The school board convened a focus group – coordinated through the superintendent – to review the suggested names, and score and rank the winners.

“Because only a few people were able to make the focus group meeting scheduled for Thursday night, we have decided to email you the score sheet for the nominated names,” Kathi Lilga wrote to Lana Chan, a member of the focus group. “If you please would please take a few minutes to rank the names … (it) would be very much appreciated. No need to attend the focus group meeting.”

Score cards show members of the group revised their scores several times before voting on the names. The tally shows Barack Obama tied with Vargas with 12 votes. In the end, the school board voted to approve the name it suggested from the beginning.

Board members also voted to name a preschool after both Barack and Michelle Obama, and to rename the board room the “Gail Urban Moore Leadership Center.”

“I don’t really have words for how meaningful this honor is, I’ve been speechless for a few days,” 37-year-old Vargas told CNN. “I hope that this is a school where students and their families feel welcome in America, no matter where they come from.”

Vargas has taunted America with his illegal status as an advocate journalist and outspoken critic of President Trump’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration. CNN featured his life story in the 2014 film “Documented.”

Vargas was detained in 2014 and received a notice to appear before a judge over his immigration status, but alleges the notice was never filed.

“So basically, like the 11 million immigrants in this country, I am in limbo land,” he said.

Vargas also made a spectacle when he accepted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to attend Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress in 2017.

Vargas said having a school named after him in the California district he graduated from “feels so special.”

“I think every undocumented immigrant in this country wherever you are … from the big regions to the small towns, we’re defined by our communities. I grew up in that community,” he said.

While still in the country illegally, Vargas heads the nonprofit Define American, which “uses the power of story to transcend politics and shift the conversation about immigrants, identity, and citizenship in a changing America.”

“It’s inhumane for news organizations to call these kids and their parents illegal,” Vargas told CNN. “ … Kids are being locked up right now because we actually don’t think they deserve humanity.”