Hours after re-taking office, Donald Trump signed roughly 200 executive orders and memoranda, many of which deal with immigration policy, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been preparing for mass deportation raids in many major cities. Almost immediately after the inauguration, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disabled asylum-related functions on its scheduling app, cancelling all asylum appointments scheduled for the remainder of Inauguration Day and preventing people from scheduling new ones. The Trump administration aims to scapegoat immigrants for the country’s problems, create a culture of fear among immigrants, and divide the working class along nationalist lines.
These executive orders will impact U.S. college students in a variety of ways. Many universities issued warnings to international students recommending those who traveled out of the country over winter break make every possible effort to return to the United States before the inauguration, in case new policies — or emboldened border officers — under the new administration make it difficult for students to return in time for their classes. Cornell University’s guidance specifically named thirteen countries targeted during Trump’s first administration and speculated that India and China could also be likely additions to such a list. While a new travel ban was not implemented on Day One, one of Trump’s executive orders directs members of the cabinet to recommend within the next 60 days a list of countries from which to ban immigration. International students already experience hardships in their studies compared to their domestic counterparts, including paying out-of-state tuition rates even if they meet residency requirements applied to domestic students and being forbidden from working off-campus.
Other student groups especially under threat from Trumpian immigration policies include undocumented students (including those with DACA status), those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), students who are claiming asylum, and students who are U.S. citizens but have undocumented family members. For instance, some student support organizations like the National College Attainment Network are cautioning new college students from mixed immigration status families to consider not filing for federal financial aid this year, out of concern that family information they submit in their application might be shared with immigration agencies.
It also remains to be seen what immigration policies — or other policies affecting education, such as anti-DEI decrees — Trump might attempt to enact using the threat of withholding federal funding from colleges and universities. Regardless of how they end up actually being affected by new policies, these students live in fear of what might happen to them and their loved ones — that they will lose their protected status, or that they or their loved ones will be deported. For students who live with undocumented family members, the trauma of a loved one being deported could be compounded with the student becoming homeless or facing other financial hardships due to the loss of that family member’s income.
Since Trump won the election, college administrations have been discussing what policies to expect and how they might choose to react. The president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for instance, has announced he intends to comply with ICE requests. The president of my own workplace, City College of New York, shared with the Faculty Senate that he is in a Project 2025 study group with other college presidents to discuss what to do. He has expressed interest in improving data security to protect immigrant students’ information and refusing to cooperate with ICE and other agencies, but with certain limits: he thinks declaring the college a sanctuary campus promises more than he can deliver, especially in the context of a mayor who is cozying up to Trump probably in hopes of receiving a pardon. But he will direct college staff to only allow ICE on campus if they have a warrant, and to direct ICE officers to the college’s legal department if they do have a warrant.
Such a stance from the leader of a liberal public institution is not surprising (many school districts are making the same pledge to only comply when presented with a warrant), but it is insufficient, and it highlights the limits of relying on institutions to protect vulnerable people from the attacks of the Trump administration, similar to how prominent Democrats and Bernie Sanders are dropping the “existential threat to democracy” rhetoric for “work with the Trump team where there are areas of agreement.” Responses like my college president’s stop at the limit of the law, and it is precisely changes to the law and to the practice and implementation of those laws that will place vulnerable students under greater threat from agents of the state.
Previously, ICE and CBP were instructed not to operate at “sensitive locations,” such as schools, hospitals, and churches. Now, there is a greater risk of these agencies operating on or near campus. What will happen if ICE agents enter campus (with a warrant) to inspect student documents or demand the school turn over student data? If the university won’t defy their legal authority, it will be up to the students and workers to rally against them. And for that to be possible, students and workers need to organize in support of immigrants ahead of time. It’s unreasonable to expect any one university staff member to refuse to comply in the moment, without knowing they have the support of their campus community. But a community that is organized and primed to respond to such attacks can mobilize people in defense, just as the large crowds of students and workers around the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment dissuaded the university from using the police to evict the second encampment for almost two weeks.
We saw last April how mass community support is key for resisting state incursions, at least for a time. A staff member at Barnard College resigned after being asked to accompany an evicted student protester to their room during the 15 minutes they were allotted to gather their things, and other Barnard staff organized a sickout that week. Workers at Columbia, CUNY, and the University of Texas at Austin also organized sickouts in protest of encampment repression, and graduate student workers at the University of California went on strike following both police and vigilante violence at the UCLA encampment. These job actions are an expression of growing student-worker solidarity in the movement for Palestine and the result of the campus unionization movement of the past several years, which has been particularly pronounced among graduate student workers. Trump is in the process of orchestrating a new travel ban, and it seems likely that such a ban will dovetail with repression of students organizing for Palestine, many of whom are immigrants or come from immigrant families.
While the encampment moment is over for now, campus organizing for Palestine is ongoing, and this movement must unite with other students and workers to fight to protect immigrant students and workers as well, building on the relationships forged last spring to make both movements stronger. As the new Trump administration begins its attacks, it’s more important than ever to form a strong opposition both on campus and off that is capable of fighting back using working class methods, which can hit the bourgeoisie where it hurts the most. Unions must mobilize in defense of our students and colleagues, side by side with student groups.
Going into the new spring semester, students and higher education workers must demand No ICE On Campus and that universities take up protecting vulnerable students in every way possible. But we also know that universities, as bourgeois institutions invested in the maintenance of stability regardless of who is in power, will never go that far unless their hands are forced, so we must organize as students and workers to protect our own against the Far Right and the government agencies deployed to enforce their policies.
