EDINBURG — A petition asking for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley to be deemed a sanctuary institution for undocumented students is gathering numerous supporters and students hope officials will listen.
“ We are asking for assurance that campus police will not question anyone’s religious affiliation or immigration status, nor allow ICE to question anyone’s immigration status,” states the petition, which as of Saturday gathered nearly 1,500 signatures on Change.org.
After a presidential campaign full of promises by now President-elect Donald Trump to target and deport undocumented immigrants and end programs such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, known as DACA, students like Abraham Diaz are seeking a safe space to learn.
“ With the rhetoric from the president-elect, there’s so much uncertainty within the immigrant community,” Diaz said. “This is one of the things we can do, I guess — be on the look out and have something we can fall on, a comfort.”
Diaz, 23, received his DACA permit on 2012 and is pursuing a major in Mexican-American studies and a minor in history. He is set to graduate in May of 2017 and his goal is to move on to pursue a master’s and a doctorate degree to one day serve as part of a board of education in Texas.
“ It’s helped me be more out there, be more free,” Diaz said about the DACA program. “I was able to get a car, go to school freely, get a driver’s license. Different little things that probably to many people don’t mean a lot, but to us it means a lot.”
Just like Diaz, there are about 700,000 immigrants in the United States who qualified for the DACA permit, which focuses on immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children. And at UTRGV there are close to 1,000 undocumented students.
The petition asks for the university to commit to support these students and not to share any of their personal information with government agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“ Students, families, and community members are fearful, and we need university leadership and locally elected officials to emerge in public support of all of our students,” it states.
Similar petitions have been initiated all over the United States as a result of the elections with thousands of students asking for their universities — including UT-Austin, Brown University and NYU — to take a stance to protect their information. But another fear is that students that have received or applied for the DACA program have already provided information to immigration services.
For Adrian Guerrero, student adviser of the Minority Affairs Council and graduate student at UTRGV, the main idea is for these students to have one less concern at least while pursuing an education.
Guerrero said the council has been receiving a lot of questions and comments expressing fear about what will happen to the DACA program and believes the university should lead the way on putting at least some of these concerns to rest.
“ I think we are lagging behind,” Guerrero said. “We should be ahead of what is going on around the nation. We have more immigrants here and more undocumented students here at UTRGV than at any other university.”
On Friday, UTRGV President Guy Bailey said he is aware of the petition and of the concern of many of his students. The election rhetoric was unfortunate, he said, but the university has been keeping tabs with the congressional delegation to follow how real of a threat this is.
“ I do understand that as a student when you hear this … it becomes something that’s troubling,” Bailey said. “But the signals we are getting from Congress is that deportation is not a priority and that this isn’t going to be an issue. If it becomes an issue, we’ll look carefully at it.”
Sensitive and personal information is not shared to any agency or any individual by the university, Bailey clarified, in accordance to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act also known as FERPA. But his plan is to personally meet with students after the Thanksgiving break to try to put some of their concerns at ease, he said.
“ I intend to meet with students and leaders and try to reassure them that I think everything is fine,” he said. “The DREAMers are a significant part of our student body and they are very important to us.”
