UC and Undocumented Students Post-Election

Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California (UC), announced this week that she would be meeting with undocumented students... and said the institution remained committed to supporting these students... In the wake of her comments, students and professors across UC, one of the largest public college systems in the country, are now pushing administrators to take aggressive steps to protect thousands of undocumented students from potentially devastating policies, which could strip them of basic rights and lead to mass deportations.

Some have urged UC to be a leader in what they hope will be an organized movement of American universities fighting back against Trump by forming “sanctuary campuses” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities...

María Blanco, executive director of UC’s Undocumented Student Legal Services Center, said the university could consider a sanctuary system that blocks campus police departments from collaborating with ICE agents. The administration could also commit to shielding students’ records from law enforcement.

“The university could in a unified way say … ‘We will protect all our student information,’” said Blanco. “For the students to know that and for the university to actually do that, that is a big protection.”

Institutions like UC “are in fact a form of state government”, noted Hiroshi Motomura, a UCLA law professor and immigration expert, arguing that the university had the power to enact specific policies.

It is unclear, however, if Trump could attempt to revoke federal funding – for scholarships and research, for example – if a university were to declare itself a sanctuary campus...

Full story at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/13/undocumented-students-university-protection-trump-california