SB4, Unjust Laws, and LSC

This article picks up a conversation about how laws governing immigration affect our college students. You can read the other parts here [1, 2, 3].

Brief Updates with DACA and SB4

1. The Fifth Circuit of Appeals: A three-judge panel unanimously sustained Texas SB4. We address this as the main of our discussion, below.
2. Neither Democrats nor Republicans amassed willingness to pass a clean DREAM Act to protect hundred of thousands of young migrants affected by the loss of DACA.
3. ICE increases aggressive separation of families across the country, including separating parents from children; as part of their strategy, ICE continues consistent policies of disinformation to confuse local communities and institutions
4. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, U.S. Attorney General -- never a friend of migrants -- has promised "using every power” in his suit against the State of California’s sanctuary laws, using rhetoric supporting Arizona’s HB 1070 (“Show Your Papers”), which has largely been shown to be unconstitutional.
5. On 26 February, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the president’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit Court Jan. 9 nationwide injunction that halted Trump’s move to rescind DACA. Therefore, Homeland Security resumed DACA renewals. The White House appeal now returns to the Ninth Circuit.

Source: Center for Law and Social Policy

The Fifth Circuit -- Abandoning the Fourth Amendment

The Fifth Circuit -- the most conservative of appellate courts -- held that SB4

• is not preempted under the federal Constitution’s Supremacy Clause;
• its section requiring local governments (including public colleges) to comply with ICE immigration detainer requests does not violate the Fourth Amendment; and
• its provision prohibiting local laws or policies that “materially limit” immigration enforcement activities is not so vague as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Importantly, the Fifth Circuit clarified that local entities -- such as colleges -- are not required to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement; that is, the court identified how local entities may help federal officials and whether they must. Stunningly, the Fifth Court ignored the Fourth Amendment (“against unreasonable searches and seizures”) when it comes to immigration arrest authority. The Court announced that immigration arrests do not require evidence of criminality; instead, the Court claims: “we…disavow any district court decisions that have suggested the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause of criminality in the immigration context.” Remember that immigration courts do not require defense, and migrants often are un-represented before the bench.

Remember, too, that ICE does not require warrants for entering private residences or business … or colleges. ICE uses Form I-274A which is not a warrant requiring a judge’s determination of “probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation.” No warrants. No defense. No rights. Professor of Law Michael Kagan notes:

At issue here is the power of the government to detain a person, citizen or immigrant, without probable cause, and without immediate review. An autocrat would very much enjoy this power.

Texas and Unjust Laws and Why a College Matters

We start with the idealistic and often untrue assumption that we all have rights in our republic: specifically, The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution give defendants the right to counsel — to be represented by an attorney in court proceedings. But recall that the Immigration Courts do not provide defense counsel if the defense cannot pay legal protection, like criminal courts do. Further, ICE has increasingly threatened all organizations — private and public—that oppose his hatred. Not surprisingly, the Texas axis of Abbott-Patrick-Paxton enthusiastically support Albence’s xenophobic stance. These two truths — the White House hunts undocumented migrants and immigration courts do not provide defense for indigent migrants — act as inhumane, uncivilized, immoral, and hostile against anti-American claims of a just system. Attorney General Paxton, again, conflates all immigrants as criminals:

Enforcing immigration law prevents the release of individuals from custody who have been charged with serious crimes. ... Dangerous criminals shouldn’t be allowed back into our communities to possibly commit more crimes.

Meanwhile, the current practice of ICE sees all undocumented migrants as targets for detention and deportation.

We see that already in our college. Our undocumented students or students with undocumented family members are increasingly stressed, absent from class, and withdrawing. I have had a student who withdrew because his undocumented family returned to Mexico; the student needed to work to support his nephews and nieces. Another student’s family has made her -- at age 21 -- the legal custodian of her little brother in case parents are deported. Other students in threatened families just disappear, without a conversation. A recent study by Kathleen Roche in The Journal of Adolescent Health shows that students in undocumented families are experiencing increased emotional stress under the current U.S. immigration policies.

With that context, we return to SB4 and the State of Texas’s insistent assault on our college students.
SB4 threatens penalties against institutions unless they collaborate with ICE’s attacks on our communities. SB4 is the law. As a law, colleges and university are obliged to obey. SB4 “allows” college enforcement officers to question the immigration status of detained students but that “allowance” intends the State of Texas to arrest and punish college/university administrators who don’t cooperate with ICE "detainers" — requests by ICE to turn over student immigrants subject to possible deportation. In SB4, East Germany-like, individuals are encouraged to report any official or staff member suspected of overlooking immigration violations. We are to “scrutinize” each other, and report to ICE. This is not a Donald Rumsfeld’s 2001 call for “vigilance,” but Stasi-like betraying each other.

[My college intention] was to study Architecture at Texas A&M, but since I wasn’t neither a citizen nor a resident, my [LSC] advisor told me that I wouldn’t risk it. Lone Star College student

We need to discuss problems of local jurisdictions collaborating with a federal department, contrary to core values of local governance. We should discuss how laws might arrest a college employee for protecting our most marginalized students, while we are not aware of any laws that arrest employees for real crimes such as racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and embezzlement. We should bring Abbott-Patrick-Paxton to the college and explain why our students are strengthening the communities and not ravaging our streets, contrary to their claims.

But here, we discuss one issue--that SB4 is an unjust law, and as such, American citizens should resist it, as we should resist all unjust laws that threaten our democratic values and future community safety.

Remember that the State of Texas was the first state to support a “DREAM” Act (H 1403/Senate Bill 1528 in 2001, supported by both parties and enthusiastically signed by previous Governor Perry when Texans used the rhetoric of “undocumented immigrants” though it now calls them “criminal aliens”). Then, undocumented students would be eligible for “local” tuition status (contrast as international tuition status). Now, our college will collude with ICE to detain and deport our students. Lone Star College has been too silent for our undocumented students. The University of Houston, for example, encourages DACA students from high school to university, provides additional emotional counseling, offers additional grants and scholarships, and provides resistance information against ICE.

DACA is what keeps students like me in school. We have faith that our grasp can let us take opportunities that university or college offer us because our DREAM to be someone in life. Without DACA, we students are just like birds without wings being able to go out and view the world or make a difference. Lone Star College student

The Hollow Rhetoric of Civil Rights and Progress of Equality

In our college, we sometimes teach Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) as an ideal of twentieth-century American rhetoric. I would recommend all administrators, staff, and faculty to re-read King for his argument against the “state’s” assaults on disenfranchised and often silent community members. Within that letter, King argues that the 1954 Board v Education decision demonstrated that state and local laws against segregation were unjust. Today, we look back at 1954 and pretend that segregation is “over.” Perhaps in our self-righteousness, we tell ourselves that -- if we lived then -- we would resist the pre-1954 laws and support the local suits that led up to Board v Education. We believe that if we lived then, we would march in Birmingham and Montgomery and Selma. Journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist Jose Vargas explains: “A deeper understanding of American history tells us that in our country, what is ‘legal’ is not always right. Legality has not been synonymous with justice.”

We live then. We live today.

Today, we are in history, and SB4 is that decision that threatens our marginalized students, our communities, and our colleges. And we are too silent.

Martin Luther King argues that such unjust laws must be disobeyed. He succinctly explains which laws are unjust to clarify:

1. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”
2. "Any law that degrades human personality is unjust […. giving] a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority”
3. An unjust law “substitutes an ‘I it’ relationship for an ‘I thou’ relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things”

King’s argument is more complex than we excerpt here, but he concludes: “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

We argue that Texas SB4 is an unjust for multiple reasons, including those that King argued fifty years ago. While history apparently sees King’s argument as correct, we are present in this the political scene, and our state leadership argues that the least advantaged communities must be punished and another institution -- the community college -- must collaborate with those who have power. In short, the Abbot-Patrick-Paxton axis expect a community enclave that has always invited the community for safety, support, and engagement to simultaneously threaten the community. An application of King’s argument for unjust laws vis-a-vis Texas SB4:

1. SB4 is out of harmony with moral law. All the great monotheistic religions were based on migrants moving from land to land. The Old Testament calls not for exclusion, but inclusion: “For the Lord your God...loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). The Quran promises protection for refugees: “Surely your Lord, with respect to those who fly after they are persecuted, then they struggle hard and are patient, most surely your Lord after that is Forgiving, Merciful” (Surah 16:110). Most migrants come to the United States because of poverty, armed conflict in other countries, social strife, political turmoil, and economic hardships. Each of these reasons are moral calls -- for individuals, families, entire communities. SB4 expects the college to collaborate with a force to return our students to poverty, armed conflict in other countries, social strife, political turmoil, and economic hardships
2. SB4 “degrades human personality” because it posits that all migrants are threats to our communities. Instead of elevating the humanity of migrants, those who support SB4 insult people based on their color, their heritages, their languages, their religions, and their life experiences. They also ignore other threats to the community, including threats to workers, educators, and all students with the persistent defunding of public education. 
3. SB4 “substitutes an ‘I it’ relationship for an ‘I thou’ relationship." The argument for SB4 relegates persons to the status of "things” -- things, like “aliens” and “criminals” and “illegals” acting the “the sin of separation.” Texas is proud of its xenophobia, and the core of xenophobia comes from not seeing human to human. The axis of Abbott-Patrick-Paxton sees people other than themselves merely as “aliens” in their hate mongering; for example, Lt Gov Patrick’s recent campaign video that "criminal aliens" committed more than 500,000 Texas crimes in recent years is merely false.

We want to discuss this further. As an institution of higher education, this community college should lead the community’s discussion on our laws and how these laws endanger our families and our families. Lone Star College has many, many strengths. We call these strengths to lead the state discussion on migration and the aggressive detention and deportation we see around us.

SB4 is a very inhumane law. I stayed in Houston because of horror of just thinking that I could lose my parents, and not to think about what would happen to my brothers wouldn’t be able to finish school. SB4 is just wrong because immigrants have made America what it is today. Many immigrants are the ones who make the houses and do the dirty work. Lone Star College student

In short, in a college of the community, we argue that Texas SB4 is an unjust law and therefore, true citizens must disobey. This is true morality. This is true citizenship. This is also true intellectualism in vein of the Enlightenment -- to liberate our minds and bodies against all forms of bad thinking, bad laws, and bad leaders. 

Political philosopher John Rawls argued that

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.

As union members, we call to become community leaders and stand for abolishing all such unjust laws. To start this discussion, we call for action, following the American Association of Community Colleges’ Commission on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity, for very specific activist leadership:

1. Resolutions issued by college presidents and trustees reaffirming diversity and inclusiveness as core values and the college’s commitment to supporting all immigrant students, including DACA and undocumented students
2. Policies to protect students in the event of Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials coming on campus
3. Creation of “safe zones” and Dreamer Resource Centers; posting FAQs and connection to resources, such as “Know Your Rights” flyers
4. Information sessions, counseling, and pro bono legal clinics offered in collaboration with community partners
5. Advocacy in support of DACA and bipartisan Dream Act
6. Training for counselors, staff, and faculty to become trusted allies and knowledgeable about best resources for Dreamers
7. Scholarships, including emergency funds, for immigrant students regardless of status
8. Curriculum and assistance in accessing career pathways and accelerating degree completion

For example, Board of Trustees at the Alamo Colleges District, which includes five community colleges located across the San Antonio, TX metropolitan area, has issued a Resolution in Support for the Educational Success of Undocumented Student DREAMers. At the request of Chancellor Bruce Leslie, the DREAMers Advisory Council was formed, a district-wide, cross-departmental committee comprised of administrators, staff, and faculty to coordinate campus resources and elevate the college’s message of support. Alamo College calls for clear ICE protocols, a centralized DREAMers resource page (like University of Houston), and provide extensive college-community collaboration, training, and outreach to protect their students and their families.

Many DREAMers are stressed and mad about what has been going on. One day we could have the world in our hands and then the next day it’s gone. These problems are making every immigrant family living in fear. They are living in a world in which a “Hello” might be the last hello. Lone Star College student