Students Organize to Create "Sanctuary" Campuses

Students at over 50 colleges and universities planned to walk out of class Wednesday to push their schools to adopt “sanctuary campus” policies to keep undocumented students safe from deportation.

The protests come amid fears that President-elect Donald Trump, who rallied supporters with his attacks on immigration, will make good on his pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants once in office next year.

Students and activists are particularly concerned about his plan to “immediately” repeal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive action that protects young people from deportation and allows them to work if they meet certain criteria. Over 700,000 people have DACA status and an estimated 600,000 more are eligible.

The idea of campuses as safe havens stems from sanctuary cities, an unofficial designation for cities where officials limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump has threatened to cut all funding to sanctuary cities, but several have vowed to continue their policies.

Students, faculty and alumni have also circulated petitions in the past week, calling on administration to designate sanctuary campuses at more than a dozen schools, including Yale, Brown, Stanford, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Southern California. 

The petitions list several demands that vary by institution. (Read Movimiento Cosecha’s list here.) These include calls for universities to refuse to release information on students’ immigration statuses, limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities and bar them from entering campuses.

A sanctuary designation might not have a significant effect on ICE tactics, but it could have a “symbolic impact.” 

“It sends a message to all immigrant students and students who have immigrants in their families that the university is an inclusive community, that the goal of the university is to educate and promote an engaged citizenry for the future and that we do that without regard to citizenship status, without regard to immigration status,” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, said.

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