NEW YORK, CMC – The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the immigrant advocacy group Make the Highway New York (MRNY) are calling on the New York Metropolis Public Colleges (NYCPS) Chancellor to take “quick, decisive steps” to higher shield Caribbean and different immigrant college students towards potential United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement actions.
They’ve despatched a letter to NYCPS Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos urging her to guard college amenities and information from ICE.
NYCLU, a non-profit group that defends civil liberties and civil rights in New York State, stated the motion follows President-Elect Donald J. Trump’s just lately introduced plans to finish restrictions on ICE arrests at delicate areas, reminiscent of faculties, locations of worship, and hospitals.
MRNY stated suggestions embody strengthening protocols towards non-local regulation enforcement’s entry to highschool amenities and scholar information, codifying the up to date protocol as regulation, and swiftly coaching college directors, scholar security brokers, and different college employees to implement the protocol accurately.
“All younger folks in New York have the correct to attend college, irrespective of their immigration standing or their households’,” stated Johanna Miller, the director of the NYCLU’s Schooling Coverage Heart.
“Immigrant college students and households are dealing with more and more harmful threats, each nationally and statewide, making youngsters afraid of going to highschool. Because the nation’s largest and most numerous public college system, New York Metropolis should take quick steps to boldly and unapologetically shield all college students’ rights to an training,” she added.
NYC Public Faculty scholar and MRNY member Dali Alban stated each scholar, no matter immigration standing, deserves to really feel protected in class.
“As the brand new Trump administration is simply days away from workplace, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos should step up and shield all NYC college students.
“Whereas anti-immigrant insurance policies threaten our classmates and our households, the chancellor should strengthen protocols to make sure that ICE can’t enter our faculties, inflict concern in our lecture rooms, and attempt to tear us other than our communities and our family members,” she added.
MRNY stated proposed steps for strengthening the non-local regulation enforcement protocols embody clarifying that NYCPS is not going to grant ICE entry to highschool amenities within the absence of a judicial warrant, requiring employees to inform dad and mom of any warrant or subpoena until they’re explicitly prohibited from doing so and requiring Senior Area Counsel to explicitly take into account whether or not compliance with any warrant or subpoena would expose the district to legal responsibility for violating immigrant college students’ proper to entry training or federal and state privateness legal guidelines.
Final week, immigration advocates in New York criticized Governor Kathy Hochul for failing to handle the plight of Caribbean and different immigrants in her fourth State of the State (SOS) deal with.
“Governor Hochul outlined her imaginative and prescient for a New York that’s extra reasonably priced, the place extra households could make ends meet, discover housing, and prosper. But, she failed to say the immigrants who’ve already contributed a lot to creating that imaginative and prescient a actuality,” Murad Awawdeh, president and chief government officer of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella immigrant advocacy group of over 200 immigrant and refugee rights teams all through New York, advised the Caribbean Media Company (CMC).
