Petition For U Of M To Become 'Sanctuary Campus' Circulates School
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Students at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus have collected more than 1,000 signatures in the last week to ask the university to create a "Sanctuary Campus" for all non-citizen students when Donald Trump takes office.
A group of students, staff, faculty and administrators helped draft the petition they plan to deliver to university President Eric Kaler on Wednesday.
One of the biggest concerns, according to student body president Abeer Syedah, is that undocumented students currently protected to stay in the United States by the government will lose those privileges and be deported under a Trump presidency.
Currently, President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program allows some young undocumented immigrants to temporarily live and work in the U.S.
About 750,000 people are protected under Obama's plan, 6,000 of them in Minnesota.
The Trump transition team has not said exactly what it will do with this policy.
The group drafting the sanctuary campus petition said it wants to get ahead of the uncertainty.
Syedah said the points in the document are recommendations to the public university, not demands.
"In this election there has been a lot of rhetoric that has questioned whether or not some people or their family members get to be a part of the vision of the United States," Syedah said.
Taking a lead from the University of California system and other big schools and tiny colleges across the U.S., Syedah said the goal is to ensure the ability of undocumented immigrant students currently protected by the government to be able to stay in school at the U of M.
The petition lists the following recommendations, to read the full copy click here.
- Unequivocally reaffirming our commitment to nondiscrimination based on national origin
- Protecting the students on campus under the Minnesota DREAM Act
- Extending legal counsel to community members under threat of detention and/or deportation
- Protecting undocumented community members' access to aid and loans
- Protecting undocumented community members from threats to loss of health insurance
- Preventing the University of Minnesota Police Department from collaborating with Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents
- Shielding community members' records from law enforcement
- Committing to finding work opportunities for students if DACA were to be revoked
- Protecting international community members by providing no more information or data than is currently legal. This includes not revealing information that identifies students by religious affiliation or through citizenship.
But, some of the recommendations in the U of M petition and others across the country have been criticized for potentially putting schools and law enforcement in a position to break the law by withholding services or information from federal agencies.
"We recognize that we don't know the legal intricacies of the relationship between the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the federal government," Syedah said. "We don't know the intricacies of how our police department would interact with immigration and customs agents."
In a statement, the University of Minnesota said:
"The University of Minnesota values the well-being of all members of our University community, including those who have immigrated to this country.
"Like higher education institutions across the country, the University is closely following the many discussions that represent a variety of positions on our country's current and future immigration laws. Some of the ideas for proposed changes have the potential to raise significant concerns for many in our community. We have not received a formal petition related to the discussion taking place locally, but we welcome the continued conversations."
In a recent interview, Trump told "60 Minutes" he would immediately deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants who "have criminal records" after his inauguration next January.
Trump said that after securing the border, his administration would make a "determination" on the remaining undocumented immigrants in the country.
