Sanctuary in the schools.

• Author: Johnson, Sharon

The election of President Donald Trump is triggering a new chapter in the movement to protect undocumented immigrants.

Thousands of students took part in a nationwide walkout November 16 urging their universities to become "sanctuary campuses." Students argue that institutions of higher learning have a moral obligation to protect young people without immigration papers as part of their commitment to diversity and inclusion. But colleges are wary of meeting students' demands because Republican lawmakers have threatened to retaliate by withdrawing financial support.

"No one knows what the Trump Administration will do," says Linda Rabben, an associate research professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland and author of the 2016 book Sanctuary and Asylum: A Social and Political History. At various points during the campaign, she notes, Trump promised to ban Muslims from entering the country, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and end President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, "which grants temporary relief from the threat of deportation."

As of mid-January, students on nearly 200 college campuses had signed petitions asking administrators to institute sanctuary status, according to Movimiento Cosecha, a national immigrants' rights organization.

Demands vary from campus to campus, but most petitions call on universities to refuse to share information about students with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to bar immigration officials from conducting deportation raids on campuses. Some students have also called for financial aid and legal counseling for undocumented students and their families.

"Many people have asked for and received sanctuary in the United States over the years, but this chapter is different because the motivation of the leaders is personal rather than political," says Rabben. She likens the current sanctuary movement to that during the 1980s, when immigrants fled violence in Central America and sought refuge in local churches. "But today, the people on the front line are undocumented students who have lived with the threat of deportation and have great determination, which increases the likelihood that they will bring about change."

Yesenia Villalpando-Torres, a student leader of the movement at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, agrees. "Undocumented students are unwilling to live in the shadows the way so many immigrants do," she says. "My parents, sister...