As the sun beat down on the pavement in Hornbake Plaza, over 100 students gathered Tuesday afternoon to advocate for the University of Maryland to declare itself a sanctuary campus by adopting policies protecting undocumented students.
The rally, which was primarily organized by this university’s chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), featured student speakers from various clubs in UMD’s student-led Anti-Imperialist Movement (AIM) and ended with chalking on Hornbake Plaza.
The demonstration was part of a broader campaign to push for this university to declare itself a sanctuary campus, according to Nick Cosgrove, a member of YDSA’s steering committee who helped plan the event.
“The point of a sanctuary campus is that students may feel that they could be in danger in their day to day life, but on campus at UMD, they would be safe from ICE because the university that they pay to [attend] is supporting them, is protecting them from this fascist overreach,” said Cosgrove, a sophomore American studies and communications major. “Right now, the university is not clear that they’re willing to stand up and defend students like that.”
The 287(g) program, which allowed local and state police departments to partner with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was recently banned in Maryland following emergency legislation signed by Governor Wes Moore in February. But a sanctuary campus is more than that, according to YDSA’s Instagram, which lists out these specific demands:
- Banning ICE from non-public areas on campus without a judicial warrant
- Immediate alerts to all community members if ICE agents are on campus
- UMD not providing faculty, staff, or student information to ICE without a lawful court order
- Barring UMPD from partnering with ICE (now handled by the ban on 287(g) agreements)
- Reuploading webpages with resources and reviving the Immigrant and Undocumented Students Life Office
Nick DiSpirito, a junior public policy major and this university’s student liaison to the College Park City Council, said that the ban on 287(g) contracts was “a good start, but it was not the end all solution.” There needs to be regulations that prevent university administrators from assisting ICE in their operations, he said. DiSpirito has pushed for the city of College Park to adopt regulations protecting undocumented residents during his tenure as a student liaison.
DiSpirito, Cosgrove, and other students felt that UMD has not done enough to support undocumented students.
“I think anything short of making this campus a sanctuary campus is not enough to protect undocumented students,” said Sara Mohammad, a junior psychology and criminal justice major who attended the event. “The university has been silent on this matter. They haven’t really done anything to talk about what’s going on, even though there are a lot of students who would be impacted.”
DiSpirito also felt the university hasn’t been responsive to the students’ efforts, citing a student petition sent to Pines in fall.
“Over 3,000 students sign[ed the petition] to go to President Pines, and obviously we haven’t heard a word from him, not even a statement,” DiSpirito said. “The president is obviously not taking these things as seriously as he should be, or giving students the time of day to have these conversations.”
The University of Maryland did not send a statement in response to a request for comment.
Although the rally was primarily organized by YDSA, students from UMD’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Committee on Human Rights in the Philippines (CHRP) chapters also attended and spoke.
Nevan McMillian, a member of this university’s CHRP chapter, connected ICE’s immigration crackdown in America to the violence against indigenous people in the Philippines.
“We all think ICE needs to be abolished. But why are there so many migrants here? Why are there so many migrants coming to the United States?,” McMillian said. “The American dream is just something people choose to believe in for a better life, because they’re forced from their home. And why are they forced from their home? Because the United States military and the countries that they work with exploit people’s homelands. They force them off their land.”
In the Philippines, mining companies and the state’s government use military to force people off their land to mine resources, displacing civilians and indigenous people and harming the environment.
In a statement to Al-Hikmah, UMD SJP wrote that “the same corrupt systems, whether it be politicians in the US funding both ICE and the Israeli genocide…are the driving force behind these injustices we’re witnessing all over the world.”
Mohammad, who is Palestinian, said the Palestinian struggle and the anti-ICE struggle are linked since “what they’re [both] rooted in is white supremacy and colonial values and imperialist values.”
America intervenes in other nations to maximize its own profits, destabilizing other countries, Mohammad said, and that “creates a situation where there ends up being a lot of immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers, because they have to find somewhere else to survive.”
Adam Bregman, a freshman mechanical engineering major who spoke at the protest, said every student should care about getting ICE off campus.
“Humans are connected by our struggle against the wealthy within our society,” Bregman said. “This is far from a plan to rid ourselves of some mystical, violent undocumented immigrant as the [government] administration would like us to believe. It is a terrorizing campaign as a retribution for our voting patterns and many minorities, their skin color, and all the actions that they are taking.”
DiSpirito said it felt “powerful” to see students from “all cultures, all backgrounds, coming together to stand up for one another.”
“I felt really happy to see people standing up for my community, being a Hispanic person, and I hope to see more of it,” DiSpirito, who delivered a speech at the rally, said. “They haven’t taken away our hope. They’ve done a lot of things, but they haven’t done that.”
To McMillian, this rally’s message goes beyond borders.
“If we make major blows to United States imperialism and fascism here, that could help alleviate the struggles of the people abroad,” said McMillian. “The only way we can all win our struggles is if we fight together.”
Image credits: Cover photo by Shubh Agnihotri.
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