UNC System President Margaret Spellings is cautioning President Donald Trump against certain deportation cases amidst raids carried out across the country.
Spellings is asking Trump to avoid deporting individuals who are participating in the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
DACA allows certain immigrants to defer deportation if they meet certain requirements. Many of these enrollees came to the United States when they were very young, but the future of DACA enrollees has been unclear under the new Trump administration. Fear among immigrant communities has also been growing in recent days as immigration raids have been carried out across the country.
Spellings, the former US Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush, asked in an op-ed published in the Washington Post that DACA enrollees be protected from deportation.
Spellings wrote, “These young people were brought to the United States as children, carried along through no decision of their own. They have grown up American — studying and learning in our public schools, celebrating our national holidays, becoming a part of our communities. They’ve made a lifetime of friends and memories here. This is the only home most of them can remember.”
While Spellings said that DACA wasn’t a “permanent solution to our immigration debate,” the UNC System president lobbied that those in the program “came forward in good faith to live within the law, to get on the right side of immigration rules they never chose to break.”
Spellings wrote the op-ed after reports last week that a DACA enrollee was taken into custody during a raid.
Spellings emphasized that these uncertainties extend beyond immigrant communities to impacting college campuses across the country.
“Thousands of DACA students are working toward degrees, striving to become the teachers, nurses, business owners and good neighbors our country needs,” Spellings wrote. “They pay tuition without the help of state or federal financial aid and, depending on where they live, they often must pay much higher out-of-state tuition rates.”
Spellings has been outspoken during her tenure leading the UNC System that she would support giving in-state tuition to undocumented students in the 17-campus system. Spellings has referred to her time in Texas as a model of seeing that system work, but undocumented students pay out-of-state tuition in the Tar Heel state per North Carolina law.
“The lives and dreams of these students were never meant to be a political statement — they just want the chance to live honestly in the only home they’ve ever known. It’s a basic principle of law and good sense that we don’t hold children accountable for the actions of their parents. We shouldn’t violate that principle to punish blameless students.”
Spellings concluded the op-ed writing that the country as a whole benefits from those who were raised here and want to succeed here, regardless of where they were born.
“These are our children, raised in our cities and towns and taught in our public schools. They share our hopes and dreams for a better America. Their faith in this country is a blessing, if we have the grace to accept it.”
UNC – Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt tweeted her support of Spellings’ op-ed on Tuesday afternoon.
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