Hanover
Donald Trump — the populist billionaire who called Mexican-born immigrants “rapists” and “criminals” and who promised to deport millions of people without legal residency status — would be the next president.
Cornejo Casares, who grew up in Illinois, is one of the people the president-elect disparaged: His parents brought him here from Mexico, his birthplace, when he was 5.
Unable to absorb the news, Cornejo Casares wandered from window to window in Baker Library, alternating between staring out blankly and crying.
“I went to sleep and woke up to a nightmare,” he said in an interview Thursday.
But after a week of mourning, Cornejo Casares and his colleagues are ready to fight back. The members of the support network for undocumented students he helped to found, known as CoFired, for the Coalition For Immigration Reform, Equality and Dreamers (a reference to the Dream Act, an acronym for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), are petitioning to make their college a “sanctuary” school that will resist deportation attempts from the Trump administration.
“We are calling on Dartmouth to protect the human rights of students by making this institution a sanctuary college for undocumented students,” says the petition, which people with ties to the college may sign online. “If Dartmouth is going to promote the value of a diverse student body, it must move to protect those students who help it to achieve this goal.”
The petitioners also are asking the college to declare that it will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in locating or detaining students, to persuade Hanover police not to work with ICE either, to provide legal and mental health support to students facing immigration problems, to provide sensitivity training for staff and faculty, and to create a legal fund for immigrant students.
As of Thursday afternoon, about 1,400 students, faculty and staff had signed the petition, its organizers said.
Later that day, Dartmouth administrators responded to Valley News questions with a statement that expressed support for undocumented students and said the school would protect them while working within the law. The statement did not address the petition’s individual demands.
Similar appeals have been circulating all over the country, with students at Harvard, Bowdoin, Princeton and many other institutions asking university administrators to declare their schools sanctuaries as well.
Several cities, including Burlington last week, have taken the same step, despite threats from Trump to revoke federal funding.
On Wednesday, Brown University President Christina Paxson responded to no fewer than three sanctuary petitions in an op-ed to the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper.
Although Paxson expressed support for the students and said the university would do its best to avoid facilitating their deportation, she said the school’s lawyers had advised there was no way to offer sanctuary from ICE. “It would be irresponsible to promise protections that we cannot legally deliver,” she said.
With the election of Trump, critical protections for undocumented immigrants may disappear.
Under the current administration, Cornejo Casares and 750,000 others who were brought across the border during childhood can receive a special status called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival,” or DACA, that shields them from deportation. DACA, however, was created by executive order from President Obama, and Trump can easily scrap it — and indeed has promised to.
On Friday, Trump announced that he would nominate U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., an immigration hard-liner, for U.S. attorney general.
After his graduation in June, Cornejo Casares, who is 22, had planned to travel back to Mexico to see family there, in what would have been his first visit since early childhood.
“That’s off the table now,” he said.
Also in question is his career. Cornejo Casares said he wants to become a university professor, but even if he can evade deportation for the next four to six years while obtaining a doctorate, without a green card — the document that certifies legal residency status — his job prospects are uncertain in the U.S.
“That’s the biggest thing now,” he said, “not knowing, and preparing yourself for the worst.”
Cornejo Casares said he would understand if there were legal limits to Dartmouth’s ability to protect unauthorized immigrants. Still, he said, he was hoping for a statement of support from administrators.
“Give me some peace of mind,” he said.
“I realize that at this moment, some members of our community feel vulnerable and at risk,” college President Phil Hanlon said in a statement last week.
“Let me assure you that we will work within the bounds of the law to mitigate any effects on our students caused by possible revisions to DACA and other immigration policies.”
On Thursday, college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said the school was committed to keeping its students safe, while still obeying the law.
“Dartmouth is committed to building a diverse and inclusive campus that leads to the best educational outcomes for all students, regardless of immigration status,” Lawrence said. “College administrators, faculty, and students, in consultation with legal counsel, have begun to study the issues posed by possible changes in regulations and to consider possible responses.”
Both Lawrence and the petitioners noted that Dartmouth had already devoted significant resources to make the school a welcoming place for the undocumented.
Administrators provide students without residency status with legal counsel and help them apply for DACA. And Cornejo Casares and his colleagues last week expressed gratitude for the support and counsel given them by both faculty members and staff.
But outside of the ivy-covered walls of Dartmouth, the world may be less forgiving, the undocumented students fear.
“We don’t know what it’s like to operate in the world, (both) as an adult and without the protection of DACA,” said Dennise Hernandez, the current co-president of CoFired.
Hernandez, who recently received her green card, said that despite her newfound legal protections, “I have to toe a very careful line.”
People with long-term residency status can still be deported for criminal offenses, she said, including those as minor as a misdemeanor.
And if Cornejo Casares and Hernandez, who have spent most of their lives in the U.S., are deported, their futures become even more uncertain. Although both come from Mexico, it is hardly where they feel most comfortable.
“I can barely hold down a conversation sometimes in Spanish,” Cornejo Casares said.
“I can barely write in Spanish,” Hernandez added.
Here in the United States, the students said, the government is not all there is to fear. Some people also have been emboldened by Trump’s campaign rhetoric — enough, in some cases, to take action on their own.
Cornejo Casares said on Thursday that a friend of his had received threats from fellow Dartmouth students who said they planned to give undocumented students’ names to ICE as soon as Trump took office.
Cornejo Casares wondered, at first, whether he should continue his activism in the current political climate, given that his outspokenness about his immigration status could put his own family at risk.
“I think I shouldn’t stop,” he eventually concluded. “If I want to embody this emboldened, unapologetic chant of the movement, I should do it — without or without DACA.”
Meanwhile, Cornejo Casares had a message for the incoming Trump administration.
“You’re going to have to drag me back to Mexico if you want to deport me,” he said. “I’m here to stay.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.