In response to President Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border, the University of California is working to send a strong message that illegal immigrants are still welcome on their campuses.
This week, UC President Janet Napolitano will visit Mexico on a three-day trip that is meant to reassure Mexican officials of the continued willingness of the UC system to partner with Mexican institutions, according to the trip itinerary.
According to University spokeswoman Janet Klein, Napolitano’s visit is an attempt to “send a very strong and loud message… that we believe it is wrong to isolate and antagonize this important neighbor.”
Napolitano is also expected to highlight UC-Mexico Initiative, a collaborative effort between UC and Mexican Universities launched she launched in 2014 that took more than $3 million dollars in taxpayer funds.
Since the election of President Donald Trump, the UC-Mexico Initiative has been shifting focus toward the growing number of students returning to Mexico with parents who were deported, lost their jobs or got “freaked out about Trump,” said Patricia Gándara, an education professor at UCLA who is an advisor with the initiative.
In January, Napolitano said that the UC system would resist any efforts from federal agencies to enforce existing immigration laws, and that campus police would not participate in joint efforts with federal law authorities to arrest individuals in violation of immigration law.
“While we still do not know what policies and practices the incoming federal administration may adopt, given the many public pronouncements made during the presidential campaign and its aftermath, we felt it necessary to reaffirm that UC will act upon its deeply held conviction that all members of our community have the right to work, study and live safely and without fear at all UC locations,” Napolitano said, in a statement to the press.
According to administrators, the UC system has approximately 2,500 illegal alien students enrolled across its ten campuses. Napolitano has said that her aim for UC is to “develop and maintain gold-standard services for undocumented students so they may be replicated in other universities.”
