On the same day that a white supremacy aligned university club encouraged students to report their classmates to ICE, hundreds of Arizona State University Sun Devils responded by marching in support of their undocumented classmates.
Crowds of students waving Mexican flags and posters with supportive messages, including “Education not deportation” and “Stand with ASU Dreamers,” surrounded a small gathering of College Republicans United at Hayden Library as they held up their own signs with information on how to tip off immigration officials about classmates suspected of being in the country illegally.
Loud shouts of “Down with deportation!”” and “No hate, no fear, everyone is welcome here!” resounded throughout the campus.
ALSO READ: 'Driven to self-loathing': Inside the extremist website believed to 'groom' teen attackers
Earlier this week, College Republicans United announced on social media that it would staff a table at the university’s central building to provide information on how to file reports against classmates believed to be undocumented, including recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — people with temporary authorization who wouldn’t be subject to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.
The student organization has frequently courted scandal, inviting Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who espouses racist talking points to speak in 2022. The new event spurred immediate backlash from immigration advocates, who slammed the move as likely to encourage racial discrimination.
Reyna Montoya, the founder and CEO of Aliento, a local organization that serves DACA and other undocumented youth, criticized the event as a bid to instill fear in students without legal status who are simply trying to get an education, and called on protestors to respond with activism.
“They wanted to intimidate students,” she shouted through a bullhorn as march attendees took a short break. “They wanted to ensure that they don’t get their degrees, and the best way to fight back is with love, with compassion — and by getting an education!”
The group made several circuits around Hayden Library and the nearby Memorial Union, with the intent of letting Dreamer students who might be listening to their chants know that they “are not alone,” before settling in front of the union to hear speeches.
Ayla Moreno stumbled on the protest by accident and quickly joined it. She listened to the speeches with tears streaming down her face, and when she noticed some of her white classmates in the crowd, she ran up to them and thanked them for their participation.
Moreno said she’s struggled with all the anti-immigrant news in the past few weeks since Trump took office, and hearing about students who vocally advocated for helping deport Latino students at her school was especially painful. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to the country from Chihuahua, Mexico, many years ago, and she said they would be astonished by the vitriol.
“They never would have expected this to happen,” she said, still wiping away tears. “I didn’t think we’d go back in time like this.”
But, she added, she was reassured by the fact that so many showed up to the protest, and that pro-immigrant advocates outnumbered the few handful of representatives from College Republicans United.
“It’s clear that there are a lot more people here, than there are against us,” Moreno said.
Nineteen-year-old Sharik Luengas, wrapped up in a Colombian flag, said it “baffled” her that anyone would be willing to call ICE on their fellow classmates. She said the news angered her as the first generation child of immigrants, and spurred her to join the march.
“Any chance I have to speak up for my family, I will,” she said.
Jesus Verdini also wore a flag to the protest, one that was half of the American flag and half of the Mexican flag, in acknowledgement of both his heritage and his U.S. citizenship. He said he was disappointed that ASU allowed the anti-immigrant event to go on, and that students just trying to get an education and help their families succeed had to deal with hostility just steps away from their classrooms. He added that he’s concerned about the risk of racial profiling, saying that there’s no way to know a person’s immigration status from just looking at them.
“You don’t know who is or isn’t an immigrant,” he said. “Immigrants are just normal people. And it’s so unjust and racist that people are allowed to discriminate against them like this.”
In a press release, ASU denounced the College Republicans United event, but said that it could not prevent it from taking place without violating free speech protections. One journalist reported that only four of the people at CRU’s event were students at ASU; they were joined by prominent white nationalist advocates.
“Encouraging ASU students to make indiscriminate complaints to law enforcement about fellow students is not in keeping with the principles which underlie our academic community,” reads the statement. “We are here to teach and learn — not to engage in self-aggrandizing conduct meant solely to generate as much media attention and controversy as possible. But we must also recognize that we live in a country that protects individual free speech, even speech that is hurtful.”
Just three years ago, the university was designated a Hispanic-serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, in recognition of its high rate of Hispanic student enrollment and opening it up to new federal funding. For the fall 2021 semester, the university’s Hispanic student enrollment was over 30,200. And that number is only expected to keep growing after Arizona voters approved in-state tuition for Dreamers in 2022.
Aliento at ASU, the student-run chapter of the larger statewide organization, drafted a letter to ASU administration officials demanding that ICE officials be prohibited from stepping foot on campus without a judicial warrant, that school administrators ensure student clubs don’t violate guidelines and assurances that students won’t be targeted by their peers without consequences and that all students can fully participate in academic activities without fear of harassment. According to Emily Sotelo, the co-chair of Aliento at ASU, the letter has so far garnered more than 4,000 student signatures. All students, regardless of their legal status, Sotelo said at the march, deserve to seek an education without fear.
“Whether they’re Dreamers or they have DACA, and they’re pursuing an education and they want to be here, they have the right to be here just like everybody else,” she said.