UNC-Chapel Hill will “follow the law” and “comply with any requests from law enforcement” regarding students whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials may seek during the Trump administration, Chancellor Lee Roberts said Friday.
For more than a decade, ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection both followed separate guidance that restricted the agencies from carrying out immigration enforcement and arrests in “sensitive” locations. Such protected locations included schools, colleges, churches and hospitals.
But on Monday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive ending those protections. The department said in a statement that the action would prevent “criminals” from hiding “in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”
The move, part of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to carry out “the largest deportation operation in history,” has already raised fear and concerns among some immigrants and their advocates.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that some families across the country are now weighing whether it is safe to send their children to school, given the possibility of immigration raids. Some schools and local law enforcement agencies, including in Chicago and Michigan, have either already refused to let ICE enter their facilities or said they would not assist with the agency’s efforts. Other groups, including churches, have issued guidance or posted signs saying that ICE officials will not be permitted to enter the facilities without a warrant.
At a meeting of UNC’s Faculty Council on Friday, Roberts addressed a range of concerns professors may have about the flurry of executive orders Trump has signed during his first week back in office and how those actions will affect their work. He then took questions from the professors in attendance.
Allison Schlobohm, a professor in the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, asked Roberts about the new directive from the Department of Homeland Security and how the university is “preparing to respond to this change.”
Roberts replied: “We’re going to follow the law, and that’s been our consistent posture.” But he noted there may be room for varied interpretations of the directive, noting that it appears to govern how immigration law and policy is enforced, and does not make an actual change to the law itself.
Schlobohm followed up by agreeing that the directive “isn’t a law” and “it isn’t a policy,” but said enforcing the directive “relies upon help from local people,” including law enforcement and school officials.
“So, in that regard, I would just like to know, if we’re asked to identify undocumented students, what will we say?” Schlobohm asked.
Roberts replied: “If we’re asked by law enforcement, we’re going to comply with any requests from law enforcement about that or anything else.”
Roberts added a caveat to his answer about complying with law enforcement, saying that the university does not “control the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.”
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to The News & Observer’s request for comment about whether the agency plans to comply with ICE’s immigration enforcement efforts under the new directives.
But there are already state laws governing how local law enforcement must handle the legal status of people who are arrested. For instance, sheriffs are required to try to determine the legal status of people they arrest if they’re charged with a felony or for impaired driving, and notify ICE if they can’t ascertain legal status.
And under a new law passed late last year, sheriffs are now required to comply with immigration detainers from ICE, which ask sheriffs to hold arrested suspects, suspected to be in the country illegally, for up to 48 hours to give ICE agents time to take custody of them.
Republicans in the General Assembly had pursued legislation requiring sheriffs to cooperate with ICE since the first Trump administration, when the sheriffs in Wake and Mecklenburg counties indicated they would not do so, The N&O reported.
Looking back at immigration orders and enforcement under the last Trump administration may prove helpful for schools and other previously “sensitive” spaces as they navigate the new directives.
Barbara Stephenson, UNC’s vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer, said at Friday’s faculty meeting that the university previously shared protocols with faculty and staff about “what to do when ICE shows up.” Given the new orders, Stephenson said her team may “revisit that idea.”
UNC isn’t the only university that will have to consider and deal with these issues. In a statement to The N&O, NC State University spokesperson Mick Kulikowski said that campus “complies with all federal laws and is monitoring the new directives.”
Another UNC professor, Miguel La Serna of the history department, raised additional questions Friday about how the new directives are being interpreted and how those interpretations might conflict with existing laws and policies, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects students’ information and records.
While Roberts said the university will comply with requests it receives about students in the country without legal authorization, La Serna noted that doing so could be a violation of FERPA, since it would be providing “personal information about our students or their status.”
“What we’re talking about is competing interpretations of the law right now, that is actually trying to keep up with the slew of executive orders that we’re getting,” La Serna said. “So I really feel like this is a time for offering reassurances to people who are incredibly vulnerable.”
Roberts said he would seek legal counsel about the potentially conflicting laws and that he did not want to “try to issue an interpretation on on the fly.”
At multiple previous points in the meeting, and again in responding to La Serna, Roberts also offered his sympathy to the university’s roughly 3,000 international students and how the “uncertainty” about immigration under the new administration might impact them.
“While I can’t really put myself in the shoes of someone whose immigration status might be affected by change in policies, I’m well aware of the of the anxiety, and we’ve heard a lot about it,” Roberts said, “and we’re going to continue to try to serve our immigrant students and scholars as best we can.”
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Korie Dean covers higher education in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer, where she is also part of the state government and politics team. She is a graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill and a lifelong North Carolinian.