With Donald Trump back in the White House, communities all over the country are reeling from reports of agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) aggressively stepping up detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
The CUNY community is among those affected. PSC members wasted little time after Trump was elected in organizing a new committee to strategize about how to respond in this environment. This year, the union’s Immigrant Solidarity Working Group was born.
During the group’s second meeting in February, more than 50 members gathered at the union’s headquarters to discuss how different campuses were responding to law enforcement pressure, and how members could respond to protect students who might be targeted.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Sándor John of Hunter College speaks at a rally against DHS recruitment
at John Jay College. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
Members discussed the rights of undocumented students and the importance of know-your-rights education on our campuses. They also participated in a role-play activity to prepare faculty and professional staff to legally delay and deter ICE agents by chanting and recording their actions and insisting that they do not enter private areas on campuses without a judicial warrant, but rather stay on the fringes of the grounds.
During a presentation, Barbara Bowen, former PSC president and a professor of English at Queens College, said the goal of such exercises is to “make it so ICE can’t apprehend students,” but that faculty and professional staff were also engaged in an exercise to “puncture the ideology that supports mass deportation.”
The event’s guest speaker, Arianna Schindle, an extension associate in training and organizational development at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, underscored the timeliness of this kind of organizing. “We’re at a deeply, deeply critical moment,” she said, noting the proliferation of propaganda that feeds a “false narrative and dichotomy” that undocumented immigrants are criminals.
Bowen stressed that campus administrations should not let ICE agents walk freely around campus. “CUNY should have a policy that federal agents should not be on campus without a judicial warrant,” she said, stressing that ICE agents often only carry administrative warrants, which are not signed by a judge.
Bowen and others emphasized the importance of staying quiet and not signing any documents if approached by federal agents.
Joe Lowndes, a distinguished lecturer in political science at Hunter College, said that when reporting possible immigration enforcement activity, it was important to gather information and make sure an ICE raid is actually happening. Oftentimes, people can see the letters “I-C-E” on a regular police car or mistake a city Department of Homeless Services police car for a Department of Homeland Security car. “Rumors spread like wildfires,” he said. “It’s important to get the information right.”
These types of trainings have occurred on other campuses and in online meetings since the inauguration, and PSC members are already taking action. On February 25, PSC members joined with students outside of John Jay College to protest the presence of several immigration enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol, at a career fair. More than 100 students, PSC members and community supporters chanted “ICE out of our schools, ICE out of New York.” (While ICE, the agency that detains and arrests immigrants inside the country, reportedly did not have its own table, the agency is connected to DHS.)
NO TO AGENTS
“The agents of deportation have no place on our campuses,” said Sam Griffith, a Hunter College undergraduate, in a speech at the rally. “If you’re disgusted with that, you’re in the right place.”
In a fiery speech at the rally, Mike Fabricant, former PSC first vice president and a professor of social work at Hunter College, said that the intensification of deportations under Trump was an attack on all marginalized communities, and he warned against people and institutions participating in “anticipatory obedience” to authoritarianism.
“It’s more important than ever that we resist,” he said. “We’re resisting for our children and future generations and for what we leave behind.”
Fabricant emphasized that the PSC was committed to working in solidarity with immigrant communities on campuses. “The PSC is our union, it’s your union,” he said. “Solidarity extends beyond our family to our community.”
In the same spirit, Sarah Chinn, a professor of English at Hunter College and professor of liberal studies at the Graduate Center, told the students in the crowd that faculty members “are scared for you,” and encouraged them to seek help from PSC members. “We support you,” she said. “Please do not hesitate, come and seek us out.”
The demonstration was lively and was meant to discourage other campuses from inviting immigration enforcement officials to recruit on CUNY campuses. So far, this student and union alliance is having some success on that front.
FOLLOWING UP
Sándor John, an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College who helped organize the John Jay demonstration, reported that two days after the protest, federal immigration enforcement authorities planned to have an information session for interested recruits. Students and faculty planned for another demonstration, but John was happy to report that the session was canceled.
For John, this was an important step forward in an intense struggle taking place at CUNY.
“They’re trying to make incursions on our campuses and we’re going to stop them,” he said.
