There is growing resistance to President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to detain and deport millions of people from the United States, Democracy Now! reported on November 22.
Mayors from New York to Chicago to Seattle say they will refuse to cooperate even as Trump promises to cut funds from so-called sanctuary cities. Meanwhile, the movement is growing for “sanctuary campuses”.
Spearheaded by the Cosecha Movement, US Socialist Worker said the call to make campuses into sanctuaries has spread rapidly since Election Day. As least two dozen petitions are circulating, calling on different institutions to declare themselves sanctuary campuses.
SW said: “The demands of the newly emerging campus movement include that administrations should refuse to voluntarily share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); refuse access to campus property to ICE; prohibit campus security from inquiring about an individual's immigration status; refrain from using E-Verify (the government database that allows employers to check immigration status); and prohibit housing discrimination based on immigration status.”
Many of the petitions also support the rights of undocumented students and those covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. During his campaign, Trump said he would reverse DACA, which has shielded 750,000 young people from deportation.
Denise Vivar, a member of the first undocumented student club at the City University of New York (CUNY), drafted the petition for Lehman College to be a sanctuary campus. She told Democracy Now!: “I started the petition after the President-elect Trump became the nominee for the presidential elections. Many of the students were really worried.
“It wasn’t just that they were worried for themselves; many of them were worried for their parents. They were worried that the fact that he vowed to revoke DACA, and they didn’t know what CUNY or what their campuses were going to do for them. It was this uncertainty of not knowing what their future holds.
“Many of them have to plan their life in two years, just because that’s how much protection DACA grants to students. And many just see the way they were so frustrated in not knowing what the future could be about.
“It made me [so] frustrated, overwhelmed, and angry, that I decided to write a petition to the Lehman College president, Cruz, so he could proclaim Lehman College as a sanctuary campus, which means that ICE will not be allowed on campuses. They will not be allowed to conduct raids on students.”
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