PROF. ELLWANGER: Universities’ opposition to ICE raids puts professors on the front line

Adam Ellwanger is a professor of English at the University of Houston - Downtown. His primary areas of expertise are rhetoric and critical theory. He writes political and cultural commentary for outlets like Human Events, Quillette, American Greatness, The American Conservative, New Discourses, Minding the Campus, and many more.

The first weeks of the Trump administration have seen a flurry of executive actions that are meant to put American colleges and universities on notice: big changes are coming. But higher education, dominated as it is by left-wing ideology, may prove one of the institutions most resistant to change.

As new “border czar” Tom Homan orders Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to continue raids aimed at deporting illegal immigrants, there is early evidence of a coordinated effort by universities to subtly challenge federal authorities’ power to enforce the law.

Late last week, the University of Houston – Downtown (my employer, hereafter “UHD”) sent an email offering similar guidance to our faculty. It wasn’t until I began researching whether other universities had taken similar steps that I learned my school’s guidance is nearly identical to that offered by Northern Illinois University. Earlier reporting from Campus Reform showed that these are not the only institutions to offer advice on how to interact with ICE.

Despite its broad distribution across my campus, it would be inaccurate to call UHD’s guidance “policy.” Curiously, my university’s documents acknowledge up front that their recommendations do not constitute “legal advice,” and I am unaware of any attempt to make this guidance into official policy through the usual channels of shared governance.

[RELATED: Fordham University issues campus protocols for ICE raids]

This is not surprising as the recommendations seem out of keeping with our historical practice when it comes to interacting with law enforcement on campus. There have been at least three occasions when law enforcement officials knocked on my classroom door and asked whether a particular student was present. In the cases when the student was in class, I acknowledged that to the officer. Then, they asked if I would send the student into the hall to meet them. In every case I complied. I never received any training or guidance to do otherwise – and I never received any negative feedback from administration for how I handled these situations.

Thus, the timing of the recommendations suggests that the university may have issued the new protocol because the issue at hand involves immigration enforcement specifically, and compliance with directives from the Trump administration more broadly.

To be clear, my university’s guidance does not ask faculty to defy or resist ICE agents. However, it does seem designed to delay their access to certain spaces within the university and to complicate identification of any particular person that agents may be seeking.

For example, my university now counsels me that, as a faculty member, I should request a warrant before allowing entry to “restricted access” and “limited access” spaces on our public campus. Absent a warrant, I am advised that I should ask for identifying information from the officer in question, and then “[i]nform the officer that [I am] not obstructing their process but need to contact UHD Police Department.”

[RELATED: University of Florida email advertises scholarships for illegal aliens]

Further, I am advised to refuse to confirm whether a given student is in my class. The document stipulates that “[a]s a UHD employee . . . [I] must maintain the confidentiality of personal and personally identifiable information, including student records.” It continues: “Federal officers typically have no greater access to university records than any member of the public unless they present a valid subpoena” (italics mine). The word typically acknowledges there are situations where greater access is warranted, but I am not a lawyer and those situations are not described. If professors are expected to be a front line of defense in these interactions, greater clarification of our legal responsibilities is in order.

The guidelines on non-disclosure are supported by reference to the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and “HIPPA” (which I take to be a misrendering of the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)). These justifications also warrant further explanation to faculty and staff.

Longstanding precedent holds that illegal aliens are afforded some rights stipulated in our Constitution. But are non-citizens who are in the country illegally (and thus not subject to the full legal jurisdiction of the United States) afforded the rights stipulated in FERPA and HIPAA? Even if they are, the matter of whether those rights are sufficient to shield individuals from federal law enforcement efforts on a public university campus is another question entirely.

UHD’s documents assert that the “principles” undergirding their recommendations are designed to “ensure legal compliance while protecting the rights and privacy of students, faculty, staff, and administrators.” But regardless of where one stands on the issue of immigration enforcement, these guidelines – which are neither “legal advice” nor official university policy – place faculty and staff in a very difficult position.

It is true that the immigration status of my students is none of my business. But neither are their legal troubles. If universities expect their employees to intervene in federal law enforcement activities, they owe them an official policy that protects their actions as they fulfill the expectations of campus administrators. Failing that, a full legal justification of their “advice” is the least they can do.