Make American University Safe for Undocumented Students

President-elect Donald Trump wants to deport upwards of 11 million US residents, many of which are our university peers. There are currently upwards of 700,000 undocumented students attending colleges across the US, currently safe under Obama’s DACA program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which protects these students from deportation and provides work permits, a program Trump has pledged to end on Day 1 of his presidency.

Colleges and universities across the nation are taking action against this unjust removal, declaring themselves legal Sanctuaries for the undocumented students they serve, and we are asking American University to do the same. This list includes Lewis & Clark, Pomona, Smith, U Mass Amherst, Brown, Yale, Harvard, Pitzer, Scripps, Stanford, Columbia, Berea, Bard, University of Madison, Wisconsin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, and Georgetown. These universities have made a pledge – they will not sit idly by as their students and staff are rounded up from campus and deported.

The idea of sanctuary is based on a long-standing Judeo-Christian principle of using churches and synagogues as places of refuge for those escaping unjust laws.

While there is no legal definition of sanctuary area, colleges and municipalities are considered sanctuaries when they enact policies or laws limiting the power of local law enforcement to assist the federal government in immigration proceedings. Yale University just passed a university law prohibiting the New Haven Police Department and ICE from removing any undocumented immigrants from Yale's campus.

Under President Trump, undocumented students justifiably fear that ICE will come knocking on their doors, especially given that they have provided the government with all of their information in applying for DACA. Especially considering that Kris Kobach, an anti-immigrant hard-liner, who is part of Trump’s transition team, was the architect of Arizona’s draconian and racist SB 1070 law that targeted all Latinos for immigration enforcement.

Immigrants are among the groups most vulnerable to a Trump presidency, but students and faculty are asking AU to stand up to protect their community from unnecessary Immigration and Customs Enforcement by declaring this university as a legal sanctuary for undocumented people.