Thread: Students from 100 universities are fighting for ‘sanctuary campuses’ to defy Trump

11/21/16 10:34 AM

Students from 100 universities are fighting for ‘sanctuary campuses’ to defy Trump’s deportation plans

By Carla Javier and Jorge Rivas

Danielle Perelman

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Brown University student Renata Mauriz felt energized as she grabbed a megaphone last Wednesday and called on school administrators to protect her personal information from the prying eyes of immigration officials.

She was participating in a walkout of hundreds of students who ditched classes to gather in front of Brown’s administration offices and chant “No human being is illegal!” and “No more deportations!”

Danielle PerelmanRenata Mauriz speaking to fellow students gathered in front of Brown University's administration building.

Mauriz, an undocumented student from Brazil, wants her school to protect its undocumented student body by blocking immigration officials from entering the university’s campus.


“I’m undocumented, so is my family. And I am in fear,” Mauriz told Fusion in a phone interview. “I find solace in the thousands of people who are uniting right now to build this national massive resistance against racism, hatred and xenophobia.”

The Brown walkout is part of a growing movement on campuses around the country. Students are demanding that their colleges declare themselves “sanctuary campuses” to shield immigrant students from President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to round-up and deport millions of undocumented people during his first 100 days in office.

Trump has vowed to end sanctuary cities that refuse to assist his immigration raids, but students say that shouldn’t stop their schools from becoming their own sanctuaries for undocumented staff, workers, and students.

“What we’re really trying to do is show the American public that we won’t let Trump normalize deportations,” said Mauriz.

So far, students from more than 100 universities have signed petitions and held protests calling for their universities to become sanctuaries. Brown alone has received letters with thousands of signatures from alumni, students, and faculty.

Brown’s campus is in Providence, Rhode Island, a city that has no sanctuary policies. The city doesn’t turn over undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records, but students at Brown say their school can go a step further than the city by preventing ICE agents from entering its campus in the first place.

This map created by Movimiento Cosecha shows where students at universities around the country signed up to be part of the #SanctuaryCampus walkout.

Specific “sanctuary” demands vary from campus to campus. Students at University of Texas-Austin are asking administrators to “refuse to comply with immigration authorities regarding deportations or raids,” while the student body at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wants school administrators to deny ICE officers permission to search campus facilities.

The uncertainly of studying while undocumented takes an emotional toll on many students. Studies have found that undocumented immigrant students, especially women, have substantially higher levels of anxiety than students with U.S. citizenship.

Now the campus sanctuary movement is saying enough to the fear and anxiety.

“This initiative really came from the students locally,” said Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, a volunteer staff member at Movimiento Cosecha. He says his organization is helping to “provide some vision as to what the students can do with their energy,” but insists the movement is growing organically.

“What is happening around the country right now is that college students with or without organizing experience are self-organizing,” he said. “They feel called in this moment to take a stand.”

Movimiento Cosecha says to become a sanctuary campus universities should protect students’ personal information from ICE, prevent immigration officers from entering campus, and prohibit university police from inquiring about students’ immigration status.

Danielle Perelman

None of the demands are that radical, legal experts say. School administrators are well within their rights to implement such measures without entering into confrontation with the federal government, says María Blanco, executive director of Undocumented Legal Services Center.

“If you really look behind what people are asking for when they say sanctuary, they are asking for some really doable things,” she says.

Universities already have several laws and tools at their disposal to protect their students, including the Fourth amendment, which protects the personal records of students, staff, and workers.

Blanco also notes that college campuses, similar to churches and hospitals, are designated by the federal government as “sensitive locations,” which means ICE officers need a subpoena, warrant, or a compelling reason to enter in search of undocumented immigrants. But that hasn’t prevented undocumented immigrants from being detained on campuses and transferred to ICE custody because of warrants unrelated to their immigration status. That’s why it’s so important to get campus police on board with the concept of sanctuary campuses.

Still, even the best campus sanctuary is limited in the scope of the protection it can offer. Students walking across the street for a cup of coffee are vulnerable to police searches.

For Thaís Marques, an undocumented student from Brazil studying at Rutgers University-Newark, the campus sanctuary movement is about more than changing policies at her school. It’s about sending a message and defining her community.

“We are in a moment right now where being inactive or being neutral is impossible,” she said. “As someone who is undocumented, I’m in survival mode, and the only way that my community and I can stay in this country is by organizing and by being vocal and coming out as undocumented.”

http://fusion.net/story/371117/undoc...uary-campuses/

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Anyone that takes funding from the federal government should have to turn over an accounting of how the money is spent and on who. Many of these students are getting a free education at these colleges and Universities that is funded by American taxpayers. While their own children can't afford to attend colleges or Universities. This has become the American way under Obama. They can apply for a student visa. They should have to pay for the college themselves. They should not expect financial aide (taxpayers money) to fund their education of people from other countries.

Get them out of the country. Get them all out now.

Originally Posted by posylady

Anyone that takes funding from the federal government should have to turn over an accounting of how the money is spent and on who. . .

All federal funding comes with rules on how it can be spent and requires records and reports.

GRANT POLICIES


A Short History of Federal Grant Policy

Billions of dollars in Federal grants are awarded each year for programs and projects that benefit the public. This assistance is rooted in the Constitution and its call to "promote the general Welfare."

It wasn't until the 1970's, however, that Federal grant policy began to evolve into what it is today. In the 70's, Congressional lawmakers responded to reports that Federal agencies were using assistance awards, or grants, to pay for services. In doing so, they could side-step competition and procurement rules normally associated with government contracting.

The Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act, passed in 1977, set out to guide government agencies in their use of Federal funds – particularly by defining the roles of contracts, cooperative agreements, and grants. Contracts, the law states, should be awarded when a Federal agency is acquiring something – an improved computer network, for example. Grants and cooperative agreements, meanwhile, should be awarded when a Federal agency is providing assistance, such as funding for a lower-income housing program in an at-risk urban community.

To help with the implementation of the law, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published guidance in 1978 directing agencies to ensure that grants funds be used only for assistance-based programs and projects.

Policy Formation

Since the 1970's, subsequent grant-related legislation has helped to further develop Federal grant policy. It works much like it did in 1977 and 1978: Congress creates the grant-related laws and regulations.

The Executive Office of the President – of which OMB is part – helps to implement the laws through Executive Orders and Guidance that define administrative rules.

Finally, the grant-making agencies create internal and external policies and procedures based on the OMB guidance. (See chart.) These agency-specific policies for award recipients do not carry the weight of law, though they may be required of award recipients if they are listed in the Notice of Award.

How Grant Policies Are Made

When a new law is added to the books, that is only the beginning.

Legal Hierarchy	Key Roles	Example
STAGE 1 Statutes Regulations	Congress appropriates funds to Federal agencies and passes other grant-related legislation	2014: Congress passes DATA Act, which directs that all Federal award data be accessible to the public on a single website
STAGE 2 Executive Orders Memoranda Circulars	Executive Office of the President issues guidance for implementing the legislation	2015: Executive Office of the President creates task force and launches pilot program to determine how DATA Act will be implemented
STAGE 3 Administrative Policies & Procedures	Grant-making agencies develop administrative policies based on guidance	2017: Agencies adjust their internal and external policies to the final guidance issued by the Executive Office of the President

Key Legislation

Other legislation has addressed everything from lobbying efforts to auditing requirements, to reporting procedures, to transparency and cross-agency data-sharing.

The OMB – along with other bodies – has continued to play an important role in interpreting and implementing the laws among the Federal government's awarding agencies. Today's current grant policies have been largely shaped by a range of statutes, regulations, Executive Orders and guidance.

To learn more about current grant policies, click below for summaries of the laws and their intended impact, beginning with the most recent:

• Office of Management and Budget Uniform Guidance (2014)
• DATA Act (2014)
• Executive Order 13576 (2011)
• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009)
• Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (2006)
• Public Law 106-107 (1999)
• Single Audit Act Amendments of 1996
• Lobbying Disclosure Act (1995)
• Federal Grant and Cooperative Agreement Act (1977)

The following pages further flesh-out the Federal grant policy:

• A Who's Who of policy-defining bodies, offices and agencies
• Brief synopses of policy developments reported in the news

http://www.grants.gov/vi/web/grants/learn-grants/grant-policies.html

Citizen Students, you aren't defying Trump, you're defying our laws, important laws, laws that help control our population, laws that protect your citizen parents jobs and businesses and one day your own, laws that protect your seat in college, laws that protect your lives and those of your loved ones.