Now that the elections are approaching, undocumented students are worried

Katherine Narvaez, a third-year medical student at SUNY Upstate Medical University, has felt an all-too-familiar fear and sense of uncertainty as the country approaches Election Day.

Those same sentiments surfaced when former President Donald Trump moved to the end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2017. The Obama-era program protects some undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to work legally. That includes Narvaez, whose family came to the U.S. from Guatemala when she was six years old.

Narvaez again faced uncertainty when the Trump administration came to power refused to process new DACA applications in 2020, apparently in violation of a US Supreme Court decision allowing the program to continue. She postponed her medical studies until after Trump’s term because she feared that all her training would be for naught if DACA was ultimately repealed and she was not allowed to work in the US.

On the brink of an election that could return Trump to power — after a campaign in which he promised mass deportations — those concerns have quickly returned.

“We are always in this place. We always have this constant fear of the future and this uncertainty, which makes it very difficult for us to plan ahead,” she said. “We are being slandered, our stories are being slandered.” It can feel like you’re “underwater and living in the shadows, without trying to draw attention to yourself.”

About 400,000 undocumented students are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities – most without DACA protection. They find themselves in a precarious position, awaiting the outcome of elections in which candidates are expected to pursue starkly different immigration policy agendas. The results could potentially have far-reaching consequences for them and their families.

“My colleagues don’t have to worry about whether they will be able to work after these four years of hard work, but I do,” Narvaez said. If Trump is elected and decides to pursue policies that support students like her, “I’ll feel like a lot of my sacrifices would have been in vain.”

An ongoing legal battle

Undocumented students are already feeling uneasy as the future of DACA is being fought out in court.

The Biden administration quickly sought to ‘preserve and strengthen’ DACA proposed rule after his 2020 victory over Trump, but that effort has been derailed by legal challenges.

Last year, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled against the policy. As a result of that ruling, the program can still accept new applications, but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will not be allowed to process them. About 530,000 people now have active DACA status, according to U.S. State Department figures recent data from USCIS.

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, said many applications are now “sitting on a desk somewhere at USCIS.” About 98,000 outstanding applications could not be processed since December last year the Presidents’ Alliance on higher education and immigration. The Institute for Migration Policy also estimates that there are approximately one million youth who meet the original eligibility requirements for DACA, but only about half have DACA status.

Arulanantham noted that most students who came to the U.S. before 2007 are eligible for the program, so some applied in the hope that the freeze will end, but others did not, knowing that “the application could not be processed and that they would throw money away. down the drain,” as it costs $555 to register online or $605 to submit the paper version.

In October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments on the challenge to the legality of DACA, but the court has not yet ruled.

Arulanantham thinks it’s likely the Fifth Circuit will rule against DACA, as a circuit panel previously found the policy’s origins unlawful when it referred the issue to the Texas court in 2022. He expects the Biden administration would appeal the decision or appeal to the US. Supreme Court to review it.

“The next administration could choose not to do that,” he said. “That is absolutely one way that the election results could impact the future of DACA.”

He noted that Vice President Kamala Harris “did not speak out in support of undocumented youth” during the campaign, “but she also did not demonize them.”

The vice president often calls the immigration system “broken” and told the Democratic National Convention in August that “we can create an earned path to citizenship and secure our border.” She has also supported DACA in the past.

“The story of Dreamers is a story of America,” she said in one statement in June, on the anniversary of the policy. “Their ambition and ambition are the strength of our communities, economy and country – and they deserve our protection.” Harris called on Congress to “pass legislation that creates a path to citizenship” and said permanent protections for these young people were “long overdue.”

Concerns that go beyond DACA

DACA is not the only concern.

Trump’s closest allies and advocates have advanced several proposals that could make it harder for undocumented students to afford higher education, or penalize states and higher education institutions that try to provide support.

US Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, legislation introduced in March that tried to prevent universities from relying on a new legal theoryput forward by Arulanantham and other scholars, allowing public universities to offer on-campus jobs to undocumented students. Proponents of legal theory argued it would go a long way toward helping these students pay for college. (The possibility was considered in a California bill at the time, but ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom.)

Project 2025, a conservative policy manual for a second Trump administration led by the conservative Heritage Foundation, recommends getting rid of “sensitive” zones, areas where immigration enforcement actions cannot take place, including K-12 schools and college campuses. It also suggests the U.S. Department of Education “denies access to loans to students at schools that provide in-state education to illegal aliens.” Currently, 25 states and the District of Columbia allow undocumented students to pay tuition, and 19 of those states provide these students with state financial aid.

This proposal is based on the idea that “the American public should not subsidize higher education” for undocumented students, and that this “takes away seats from other deserving students whose parents have not broken any laws,” said Ira Mehlman, media director. at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that promotes more restrictive immigration policies. He argued that policies that provide financial assistance to undocumented students send mixed signals to people seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

“If you’re going to say, ‘Don’t come here, but if you come and bring your children, we’ll let your children stay and give them special status,’ we’re actually sending contradictory messages. messages, and you’ll get a lot more people doing this,” he said.

Arulanantham said he doubts this policy proposal, or others that could target undocumented students, would survive if brought to court, given past precedent. That makes the Trump allies’ ideas “low risk but high impact,” he said, if they become reality.

Ripple effects

While the federal policy landscape appears bleak for undocumented students under a second Trump administration, Arulanantham believes the policy outlook at the local and state levels could be brighter for these students.

He noted that state and local policies protecting undocumented immigrants — including cities and states designated as “reserves” that will not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — have increased in response to Trump’s first presidential term.

“It really created a wave of extraordinary pro-immigrant legislation in California and in other states,” he said. “I think it’s certainly possible that, if Trump were to win, there would be a similar surge of energy to protect immigrants from the mass deportation campaign that Trump has promised.”

Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance, offered a less optimistic view: A state like Texas could crack down on its undocumented population, she said, either spurred by a Trump victory or in response to Harris’s.

She believes that colleges and universities should be prepared to support their undocumented students, regardless of who wins, by proactively promoting professional development opportunities for them and providing mental health and legal advice to noncitizen students and staff.

Feldblum says higher education leaders and scholars must play a role in “helping support bipartisan solutions,” in part by keeping lawmakers informed about immigrants’ contributions to the economy and how higher education institutions are affected by the immigration policy.

Policymakers from both parties agree that “the U.S. needs talent,” she said. “You have an individual trained as a nurse, as an engineer, as a teacher, as a doctor, and those are exactly the kinds of sectors where we need professionals and workers.” Giving these students pathways to work permits has a “direct impact on their communities.”

Narvaez said that’s why she wants to become a doctor and that she hopes her career path isn’t threatened by whatever happens in this election.

“We work hard,” she said, “and we just want to continue contributing to the communities where we all (grew up).”