WASHINGTON, Nov 25 (APP): Americans university students across the United States are campaigning to turn college campuses sanctuaries to provide shelter to undocumented international students fearing they could be deported by the next administration under President-elect Donald Trump.
Students from more than 100 colleges, including New York University and Columbia University, staged a walkout to press their universities to implement policies that could ensure a `safe space’ for students not born in the United States, New York Posts reports.
Trump has taken a hardline against illegal immigrants and has
threated to deport at least three millions with criminal records in the first phase. He has often said that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who will have to go back. He has also feared to take a hardline approach on immigrants from Muslim countries, after his statement during the election campaign that Muslims should be banned from entering the United States.
On Wednesday, hundreds of students marched out of their classrooms, carrying placards which said “Not our campus, NYU rising and We demand a sanctuary campus”. Liberal students feel that undocumented students are among the most vulnerable and have vowed to resist attempts to deport them.
Trump has threatened to repeal Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) programme, which President Obama enforced under an executive order in 2012 which allowed illegal immigrants who were in the US before they were 16 to get a renewable work permit that lets them stay in the country for two years.
The Oberlin College in the state of Ohio, which is seen as one of the
country’s most liberal campuses, nearly 2,500 students signed a petition, urging the university authorities to turn the college into a sanctuary.
“Given the outcome of the presidential election, we call on Oberlin
College to stand with other colleges and universities and investigate how to make Oberlin a sanctuary campus that will protect our community members from intimidation, unfair investigation, and deportation,” the report said quoting the letter.
Ivy League universities including Brown, Harvard and Yale are also
trying to protect their students.
Secretary of State of Kansas State, Kris Kobach, who is thought to the
among Trump’s candidates to lead the Department of Homeland Security, is seen as a hardline against immigrant and it is feared that he will turn Trump’s more controversial anti-terrorism proposals, like the so-called Muslim ban on entering the United States into reality, the online magazine, The Hill reported.
