Republican State Lawmakers Seek to Ban ‘Sanctuary’ Campuses

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Republican lawmakers in at least seven states have moved to prohibit colleges from trying to protect undocumented students from apprehension by immigration authorities under the Trump administration.

The legislatures of Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas have advanced bills calling for state funds to be withheld from colleges that adopt policies intended to hinder the enforcement of immigration laws. Similar measures have been proposed in Iowa, Pennsylvania, and, most recently, North Carolina.

Public-university officials “are not above following immigration laws, and hopefully these changes will provide the incentive needed to make them do the right thing,” State Sen. Norman W. Sanderson Jr. of North Carolina said in introducing his bill last week.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who strongly supports a measure passed by that state’s Senate last month, has characterized efforts to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants as a threat to public safety:

Texas will not tolerate sanctuary campuses or cities. I will cut funding for any state campus if it establishes sanctuary status. #tcot https://t.co/2wN4eo1YLG

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 1, 2016

Critics of such efforts, however, argue that the measures are unnecessary because, when it comes to matters involving undocumented students, colleges are already cooperating with federal officials and local police to the full extent required by law.

“These bills are political posturing,” says Thomas L. Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He says public-college presidents “are sympathetic to the plights of students, but they know that they have to follow the law, and they will follow the law.”

Michael A. Olivas, a professor at the University of Houston who teaches immigration law and higher-education law, calls the bills “a solution in search of a problem,” partly because he has never heard of any student being arrested on an American college campus for an immigration-law violation. Moreover, he argues, any measure that would punish colleges for not voluntarily cooperating with law-enforcement authorities more than the law requires “betrays a lack of understanding of what the limits of the law are.”

In Arkansas, where such a bill died last month in a House committee, State Rep. DeAnn Vaught, a Republican, told the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network: “We already have federal laws in place. Why create fear for no reason?”

Uncertainties and ‘False Hope’

The proposed bans on sanctuary campuses represent a backlash against a national movement urging colleges to resist efforts by the Trump administration to deport people who entered the United States illegally. The movement began almost immediately after the election of President Trump, who had pledged during his campaign to deport millions and to eliminate the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, which lets some undocumented young people remain in the country for renewable two-year terms without fear of deportation.

Although many colleges have pledged to do what they can to support undocumented students, only about a dozen have formally declared themselves to be “sanctuaries.” Others have been reluctant to do so, citing uncertainty over the exact meaning of the term, as well as fears of offering a false sense of security to students that colleges cannot in fact protect.

“We believe the term itself offers some kind of false hope,” says the Rev. Michael J. Sheeran, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. “There are things that are legally the rules,” he says, “and we can’t eliminate those rules because we don’t like them.”

The state measures intended to pressure colleges to cooperate in immigration law enforcement generally do not focus narrowly on declarations of sanctuary status. Instead, they proscribe a list of potential college policies or practices that their supporters see as amounting to resistance.

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Among the bills that are currently pending:

A Georgia bill, directed at private colleges and overwhelmingly passed by that state’s House of Representatives last month, calls for the withholding of both state funds and state-administered federal funds from any college that adopts a “sanctuary policy.” It defines as a “sanctuary policy” any policy, rule, or practice that restricts a private college’s employees from cooperating with federal officials or law-enforcement officers who seek nonconfidential information about a person believed to be in the United States illegally or to have otherwise violated the law.

State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who joined four other Republicans in sponsoring the bill, told fellow House members that it sends private universities the message that lawbreaking is unacceptable. But Democratic lawmakers have attacked the Georgia bill as likely to unfairly punish innocent students, because much of the state money that could be withheld from colleges under it consists of financial aid awarded to students through Georgia’s popular Hope Scholarship program.

An Alabama bill, overwhelmingly passed by that state’s House of Representatives last month, calls for the state to withhold funds earmarked to any public college that fails to comply with federal or state immigration laws or to cooperate with federal or state authorities in enforcing them. The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Phil Williams, who has titled the measure “the Americans First Act,” has told fellow lawmakers that he did not draft the bill in response to any sanctuary declaration from a college, but because he wanted to deter colleges from considering such a move.

The Texas bill supported by Governor Abbott calls for the state to levy fines of up to $25,000 a day against campus police departments that adopt policies or practices discouraging the enforcement of immigration laws.

A Pennsylvania bill, which has more than 30 Republican co-sponsors in that state’s House of Representatives, calls for the state to withhold funds from any public or private college that adopts a policy refusing federal authorities access to campus or directing employees not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Of higher-education institutions in that state, Swarthmore College declared itself a sanctuary campus, and top administrators of the University of Pennsylvania have said they will not allow federal immigration authorities on campus unless required to do so by a warrant.

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.