The national level
Within his first six weeks as president of the United States, Donald J. Trump issued three executive orders related to those immigrating to the U.S. The most discussed, as related to higher education, have been the two versions of “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” When first issued in January 2017, members of college and university communities across the country began asking questions — for which there were not abundantly clear answers. Questions continue, and institutions of higher education are turning to one another, to their leadership and to their own faculty and staff for information and guidance in navigating an uncertain, changing and, for some, unsettling landscape.
Read the executive orders here:
On Sept. 5, 2017, the White House and the Justice Department announced an end to a program established in 2012 by President Barack Obama called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA. The program was designed as a way to allow children of immigrants who entered the country illegally to have legal access to education, to work and to obtain driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers. There are many restrictions to this access, but a simplified explanation of the act is that it provides these children and young adults with the same level of access to opportunity as their peers who hold legal status in the U.S. These children and young adults are also referred to as “Dreamers,” a reference to the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which was introduced in Congress in 2001 but never passed.
In a 5–4 ruling issued June 18, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to end the DACA program. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called the administration’s attempt to rescind DACA “arbitrary and capricious,” stating that the effort was in violation of federal procedural law. The ruling allows immigrants to retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the U.S.
However, the ruling does not prevent the Trump administration from pursuing a renewed effort to terminate the program. In a June 19 tweet, President Trump said he intends to again seek an end to the DACA protections. The Supreme Court’s ruling, in full, is available here.
The executive, legislative and judicial branches continue to work through the issues covered under the DACA program.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website provides information about what DACA is, what has changed, and the application and renewal process. It also has archived information, including previous DACA updates, here.
Below is an explanation of what “deferred action” means, from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website:
Deferred action is a discretionary determination to defer a removal action of an individual as an act of prosecutorial discretion. For purposes of future inadmissibility based upon unlawful presence, an individual whose case has been deferred is not considered to be unlawfully present during the period in which deferred action is in effect. An individual who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be present in the United States, and is therefore considered by DHS to be lawfully present during the period deferred action is in effect. However, deferred action does not confer lawful status upon an individual, nor does it excuse any previous or subsequent periods of unlawful presence.
Under existing regulations, an individual whose case has been deferred is eligible to receive employment authorization for the period of deferred action, provided he or she can demonstrate “an economic necessity for employment.” DHS can terminate or renew deferred action at any time, at the agency’s discretion.
Read more information about DACA here.
The state level
At the state level, the North Carolina legislature is reviewing Senate Bill 341. The bill, titled “An Act to Repeal Law Enforcement Authority to Use Prohibited Forms of Identification under Certain Circumstances, to Create Additional Incentives for Local Governments to Comply with State Laws Related to Immigration, to Create a Private Cause of Action to Remedy Local Government Noncompliance with State Immigration Laws, to Prohibit UNC Constituent Institutions from Becoming Sanctuary Universities, and to Direct the Department of Public Safety to Enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Homeland Security,” was filed on March 21, 2019. The bill, which has been referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations of the Senate, includes language that would withhold state funds from any university that does not comply with existing federal law. View the bill here.
By and large, state institutions were created by state governments to increase access to education for their residents, and state governments have a lot of say in how state institutions are run — from regulating how they can spend their money to the specifics of pay structure and employment benefits of university employees.
In September 2017, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein joined a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Trump’s plan to end DACA. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, the suit seeks to block the government from using any “information provided by DACA applicants and recipients to identify, apprehend, detain, or deport any of them or their family members.”
Read the full Raleigh News & Observer news story here.
Additionally, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, more than 29,000 North Carolina residents are recipients of DACA benefits as of June 2019.
