When one of the country’s most progressive campuses is not a sanctuary
While Pomona College in Southern California maintains declaring sanctuary can be misleading, one of its students is part of a national movement to promote the term.
By Daniela Gerson and Tim Whyte
Pomona College, one of the nation’s top liberal arts institutions, offers exceptional support for its undocumented students such as emergency grant funding, a support network, and legal assistance. And yet, the college president, David Oxtoby, refused to support calling the campus a sanctuary.
“Private colleges cannot promise full protection from the immigration authorities or law enforcement,” Oxtoby wrote in a letter to the campus in November following the election in which he said the movement “deeply resonates” with him.
On the liberal campus of 1,640 students, where about 50 percent are minorities, many have advocated for the campus to declare itself a sanctuary. More than 600 students, faculty, and alumni signed a petition demanding “that the College declare itself a ‘sanctuary center of higher education’ committed to protecting the members of its community from unfair deportation, investigation, or other intimidation.”
Despite refraining from declaring the campus a sanctuary, Oxtoby pledged his support via other means. “We will raise our voices and act to the full extent of our legal power to protect and support members of our community,” he wrote, adding that campus police do not cooperate with immigration enforcement and student data is protected.
A critical force in driving the petition drive on campus, and a national sanctuary campus movement, is Xavier Maciel. The Newark, New Jersey native’s parents are undocumented immigrants, as is his sister who was smuggled across the border at 2.
The night of the election he watched the results in shock with friends at Pomona. “I remember calling up one of my friends who was undocumented. She was distraught,” he said. “I didn’t know how I could possibly tell my parents. I was in shock, I was fearful. I had no idea what I was going to do.”
Maciel threw his nervous energy into organizing sanctuary campuses. Political from a young age, he knew how to organize by the time he arrived at Pomona. So the day after the election he started working with faculty on a sanctuary campus petition, and created an open Google document where other schools could share their own.
Soon he was crowdsourcing responses from around the country. By the first week of December he was receiving sometimes 40 emails a day. With more than 200 schools documented, the pace has calmed down, but the work of promoting a sanctuary campus movement remains.
“Now we’re dealing with the legality of it,” he said. “It’s a matter of really reaching out to these different activists at different schools.”
