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Boston University students rally for a ‘sanctuary campus’
A Department of Homeland Security officer was coincidentally seen on BU's campus the same day as the pre-planned protest.
Boston University students held a planned protest on Thursday, demanding the creation of a “sanctuary campus,” on the same day that a Department of Homeland Security officer was coincidentally spotted at the university.
The protest, scheduled for 3 p.m., was advertised on social media several days in advance of the rally.
Students called on the university to “declare itself a sanctuary campus” and “actively work to protect all students from federal overreach, regardless of immigration status,” BU Young Democratic Socialists wrote in the social media post about the protest.
“Right now, there is nothing stopping BUPD [the Boston University Police Department] from cooperating with ICE as Boston’s sanctuary city law does not apply to our campus police. We want that to change,” the student group wrote in a petition to designate the university as a “sanctuary campus.”
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BU YDSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roughly 60 students chanted outside the university’s Dean of Students office, according to BU spokesperson Colin Riley.
Calls for “sanctuary campus” policies are not unique to BU. Students at other universities across the country, including the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the University of Texas at Austin, have made similar demands.
“They want to be able to feel safe on their campus, and they want to feel like the administration has their back and is working in the interests of all students, including non-citizen students,” Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic at BU, told Boston.com.
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Philip Wohltorf, vice president of BU College Republicans, expressed concern about the potential for BU to lose federal funding if it adopts the sanctuary campus policies.
“Funding could be jeopardized if the university obstructs immigration enforcement,” Wohltorf told Boston.com. “That can have real legal and financial consequences. … So I don’t really think that’s right.”
The protest at BU comes after a Tufts University student was detained by ICE agents outside an off-campus apartment building in Somerville last week, Boston.com previously reported, sparking a protest led by labor union leaders outside the JFK Federal Building on Tuesday.
On the same day as the BU protest, an officer from the Department of Homeland Security reportedly “approached a student requesting information about a BU Law alum,” according to an email obtained by Boston.com. Riley also confirmed that the law enforcement officer was on BU’s campus on Thursday.
“Our current understanding is that the officer was conducting a routine background check related to the alum’s recent employment as part of a standard procedure,” the email from Law Student Affairs says. “However, it does not appear that proper guidelines and processes surrounding background checks were followed.”
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Typically, BU police and other campus partners are informed before external law enforcement comes to BU’s campus, according to the email from university officials.
BU Law Administration and BU police are actively investigating the incident.
It is not clear if the officer was aware of the protest, but Sherman-Stokes said she understands why people might think the coinciding visit from the federal officer could have been “intentional given everything else we’ve seen on campuses across the country in the last few weeks.”
“It’s very reasonable to wonder whether this decision was also designed to provoke panic, but I obviously don’t know for sure,” she said.
Riley assured that students should not be afraid of “something that’s a routine procedure.”
Nevertheless, the officer’s presence on campus caused “panic” among students, Sherman-Stokes said.
“It caused an unbelievable amount of fear for students who are just trying to go to school and learn and now they’re worrying about their safety and their status and their residency in this country,” she said.
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