In September of 2017, President Donald Trump gave Congress a deadline of March 5 to reach a consensus on immigration reform. If lawmakers did not act by that date, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was to be phased out and its protections ended.
In the same month the deadline was announced, a statement from the Inter-University Council of Ohio was issued to Senator Rob Portman, which Wright State University had signed onto. The statement expresses concern about the potential adverse outcomes of rescinding DACA.
“Taking action to rescind this program, even with a reported six-month delay, will throw the lives of hundreds of young people and their families into turmoil,” the statement reads. “These students have been raised and educated in the United States and have proven to be an important asset to our society. They need our support.”
In late Feb. of 2018, a campus-wide email was sent from Matt Boaz, chief diversity office of the Office of Equity and Inclusion at Wright State.
“Wright State University is committed to complying with all federal and state laws, including upholding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that makes it unlawful for university officials to disclose a student’s educational records without their expressed permission, a lawful subpoena, or a court order,” Boaz said in the email.
“The university has treated [DACA] students the same as any other students,” Boaz said. “Until we have some kind of concrete direction in terms of what the government is doing, what the policies are, [and] what federal laws are changed or impacted, we’re going to continue honoring the educational process of people impacted by DACA.”
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities have expressed support for a policy that would provide an avenue for DACA recipients, according to Boaz. “We hope that federal policymakers will make a way for those folks to continue with the successful progress that they’ve made and to be able to pursue their education,” he said.
The Wright State Faculty Senate also passed a resolution which recognizes DACA students as an “important asset” to the campus community and supports the BRIDGE act, a proposed bill which would provide work authorization and protection from deportation.
Despite the fact that the deadline has already passed, applications for DACA are still being accepted; this is because action from a judge in California made the deadline ineffective. The judge ruled that the president did not take the appropriate steps to phase out DACA, according to Boaz.
DACA will remain intact until the proper steps are taken, but the fates of the nearly 800,000 individuals protected under the program remains unclear.
