Studying Under the Shadow of Deportation
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Lisa
I’m Lisa Levenstein, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Nan
And I’m Nan Enstad, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lisa
Welcome to Collegeland!
Nan, you probably remember that for his entire presidency, Trump tried to end DACA, the Obama-era policy that allowed limited protections from deportation—to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children. And this summer, a federal judge ruled DACA “unlawful,” and though the program is continuing for now, it’s not accepting new applications.
News Clip (Anchor)
People took to the streets in D.C. today to protest a ruling by a federal judge in Texas to halt the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, also known as DACA, which provides limited protections to about 650,000 people...
News Clip (student)
Now is the time to act; we’ve been sounding the alarm for so many years. We need to make sure that we get citizenship for all of us because we are not free until all of us are free...
Nan
Ooo, these past few years have been a roller coaster! The Trump administration had canceled the program, but the Supreme Court in 2020 upheld DACA--a huge victory for immigration advocates--and the Biden administration has vowed to *strengthen* DACA. But ay yi yi-- the ruling last summer stands for now while the federal government prepares an appeal. And it’s not just deportation protections at stake. DACA recipients can work legally--which is pretty important when the tuition bills start showing up, especially because they can’t get any federal assistance. And all this is not to mention the many undocumented students who don’t have any protections or way to work legally at all. It’s got to be super anxiety-provoking for students.
Lisa
You know, I think this issue is only going to get more critical. Nan, we know that more and more students of color are enrolling in higher education—you and I have really seen this happen.
Nan
I have seen it happen, you know, —but not here; from a distance. You know, I’m at UW Madison, which is the flagship campus at Wisconsin, but the changes in this are really happening out at the branch campuses, at places like UW Milwaukee or UW, Oshkosh. I keep hearing things around here like, “Oh, Madison’s not that diverse, or Wisconsin’s not that diverse” — but that’s bullshit, because If you look at UW-Oshkosh, you’ve got this formerly hyper-segregated city that has been totally transformed by a combination of active recruitment and grassroots student activism. So, you know, I’m sorry to rant, but it’s just insane that we can’t make more of an effort here in Madison.
Lisa
Totally. I mean, here at UNC Greensboro we’ve always had a lot of students of color; it was diverse when I got here, and it’s even more diverse now. I mean, we’ve actually reached some sort of statistical tipping point so that the university now promotes itself as a minority-serving institution.
Which is a really great thing...But! You know, I’ve been in so many rooms with white administrators in suits talking about what the “metrics” tell us about this new group of students— what seems to be missing from the conversation is any real sense of what it feels like to be one of those students.
So, Nan, I reached out to someone who knows.
Shirley
I had many students who were fully undocumented and didn't have DACA status, but even my DACA students were super stressed out.
Lisa
That’s Shirley Leyro
Shirley
I am an Assistant Professor in the Criminal Justice Program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, which is part of the City University of New York university system.
Lisa
Shirley has been working at Manhattan Community College since 2014. It’s a school with a large percentage of Latinx, Black, and Asian students — most of them women, and, of course, some of them undocumented. And she is doing research about undocumented students’ experiences on campus that asks really different questions than the ones the administrators at my university are posing. And those questions build on her own experiences as both a student and a faculty member.
Shirley
I was raised in a very religious household and I was always taught that college was time, money, and energy that you can spend serving God. So, growing up, we were discouraged from wanting to go to school beyond the K to 12 system. So, I had no plans on going to college.
When I was younger, I've always wanted to be a lawyer. Plus, I was raised in the New York City housing projects during the crack epidemic. So I saw a lot, and I just remember thinking “too many of us are behind bars and not enough of us representing those folks.”
So, right after high school I started working for an attorney. I was a secretary. 18 years of age, didn't even know how to turn on a computer [laughs], and, uh, so, you know, head first, that's how I learned to swim.
So, I had no plans of going to college; I got married very young and then I got divorced very young, and then that's when I was like, “okay, I'm going to go to college.” I started to really dig what I was studying, which was criminology. And then I was talking to one of my professors and I said, you know, I think I'd be really good at teaching. And he was like, “well, why don't you try adjuncting? You know, teach a class, see if you like it.” I started teaching, and that's when I knew - this is what I want to do; I want to teach.
I said, “what do I have to do to teach?” and I said, “I need my Ph.D, alright, I'll get my Ph.D. And I had no idea what that meant, no idea what was entailed
You know, academia really isn't designed for, you know, for people who come from my background, look like me. It was a struggle. And it continues to be one because it's not easy being a woman of color in academia.
Lisa
Can you talk a little bit about the way that the process of even getting a Ph.D. is structured and the barriers that are built into that process?
Shirley
One of the barriers is financial. So for me, I worked while I was an undergrad. I worked while I was pursuing my BA and MA, and I worked as a Ph.D. student. So, like I would teach in the mornings and then I would go to work and then I would go take classes at night. And Ph.D. programs are not designed for people to work. You know, you are expected to give up your job and that's hard. Right? But the reality is that if you come from a background from mine, you probably are not going to be able to live as a student and live. So, there’s also this assumption that the college experience is singular, mainly the one that people went through themselves, and just having a positive college experience entails much more than “you need to be on campus.” And I will say that it is true that belonging and membership to a college community does involve being able to participate in activities but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be available to night students or students who are participating online.
Lisa
What you are saying makes a lot of sense in terms of, I see this all the time, people who teach in higher education have an image of what higher education should be based on their own experiences.
Shirley
Yes, and if we believe in “college for all,” right, which was a very 70s/80s thing, right? - “college for all” - if we believe that, then it has to be college for all, right?. And it has to be redesigning pedagogy, redesigning campus activities, so that it can truly be college for all, because sometimes you have to make modifications so that that population of people that you are speaking to can actually participate.
Lisa
So we said “college for all” but we didn’t change college itself, at all.
Shirley
Exactly. You know, even in conversations in department faculty meetings, I know how it is to be a person who works and goes to school at night and the struggle that that takes. Right? Whereas one professor's like “the student is always coming late, you know, they need to be more motivated;” I see someone who, despite the fact that they're late, they're there and that's motivation enough.
Lisa
It seems like, part of what you're saying is that very same students who some might consider unmotivated, because they can't devote 24 hours a day to their school, they might be running late sometimes; that what you see in engaging with them, is a tremendous motivation!
Shirley
Exactly. When I went to school, I was on a mission, and I think that's how they see it, right? That they're on a mission and their mission is to get this degree that allows them the social mobility that they need.
And I understand that because I was on that same mission.
Lisa
It's particularly incredible, when you think about the fact that maybe only 2% of all Ph.Ds are Latinas
Shirley
Yes
Lisa
That's amazingly low.
Shirley
Very.
Lisa
Can you talk about what you see as your role in nurturing the next generation?
Shirley
So, many students who are matriculated into college, uh, a large number are of Latinx/Hispanic origin and the majority of those would be women. Considering that, and seeing how many few of us are actually seeing the instructors and educators that they can look at and say, “wow, you know, she can do it, I can do it.” And that's how I see my role.
I want, you know, all of my students, regardless of their ethnic background, but in particular, my Latinas, because I'm a Latina [laughs] is, uh, I want them to see that, you can be what you can see. So I'm a professor, I'm a Ph.D. I'm also Puerto Rican and I grew up in the projects. You can do it too. Right? It's attainable. You know, but it's hard.
Lisa
Can you talk a little bit about the Borough of Manhattan Community College?
Shirley
Yes, so, I love where I work. I am able to reach so many students. You have single parents, you have a wide array of people who really want to move upward in that social ladder and, you know, achieve that CUNY American dream.
You know, community colleges get a bad rap. They're considered to be “13th grade.” I remember when I got hired, a bunch of us were at a conference and there was a book publisher talking to a couple of us and the publisher was like, " you know, where are you working?" I was like, “Borough of Manhattan Community College.” “Oh, okay.” [laughs] It was like, “oh, community college. All right.” [laughs].
Lisa
Nan, hearing Shirley’s perspective, it really shook me. Because a few years ago, honestly I was that professor. I remember being so frustrated with students in my night class who were late, the ones who fell asleep, or were just sitting there and I felt like they weren’t bringing enough energy to our discussions.
Now I’m looking back and thinking about the fact that same semester,, I was teaching an online class, and that class attracted a lot of students who had full-time jobs and I was so struck by the fact that if I held office hours in the evenings, those students would come to meet with me as late as 8:30 or 9. And somehow, I was able to see the motivation of the students showing up in office hours but I just didn’t see it with the students who were showing up and sitting through a 3-hour night class.
Nan
Yeah, Lisa, I mean, I think all of us struggle with the occasional student who falls asleep in class, right? I mean, sometimes students fall asleep in my discussion classes, not just the lectures. You know, it's hard! So, my story about this is, like a few years ago I was teaching a huge first-year history class, all lecture, over a hundred people in the room and the entire new members of the football team enrolled; they all enrolled as a group. And they are instructed by the football team to sit in the front row of their classes, so every day these huge guys would file in, flop down in the tiny lecture hall seats, and fall asleep. Every day! So I’m thinking, you know, these guys just don’t care much about academics. Ya know, they’re football players! And one day I went up to them and as they were rousing themselves and said, “hey you guys, can I talk to you?” And they’re like “uh, oh…” And I’m like ”guys, is there anything I can do to help you be engaged in this class?” And one of them said, “hey, you know, no, we appreciate how hard you try, but we get up at 6am and then we run 3 miles, and then we go lift for an hour, and then we go eat a big breakfast, and then we come to your class.” And I’m like — “so like, there’s no physical way that you're going to stay awake in my class!?” And they’re like “yeah, that’s right…” So, then we just had to laugh about it.
Lisa
I mean, it’s so amazing to think about. You ask the one question and you get all of that information and it just completely transforms how you understand what's happening in front of you, right? It's such a good example of how much, of what a difference it makes if we just understand the lives of our students, even just like a little bit. And when you think about it, having faculty who really understand student experiences, it really helps us have a better and more successful university.
Nan
Yeah, and Shirley’s experience with that book publisher is just, like, everything that is wrong with how we view community colleges. And you know, I’m thinking, if research is only conducted at Harvard and Yale and places like UW, Madison, we’re going to miss out on a lot of good work and I’m gonna be honest with you, Lisa, I bet there’s a lot of people at UW, Madison that don’t even know that people at community colleges do research.
Lisa
Right. Exactly, I mean, Shirley’s first study came out of questions she was asking about the academic theories and public rhetoric that suggested that immigration causes “social disorganization” and that “social disorganization” causes crime. Like, this was the assumption in all of her classes. She started questioning that, and found other literatures and data that showed, basically, the exact opposite. But then she did like the next step, too, right? She took the time to go out and talk with people in the communities who were being written about.
Shirley
There's a lot of literature, both in criminal justice and criminology and outside that show that in fact, immigrant communities experience lower rates of crime. That immigration actually lowers crime rates, wherever immigration influxes appear. And that just historically immigrants commit lower crime than the native born.
So if it's not immigration, maybe it's immigration control. Maybe it's the mechanisms that the state uses to control immigration actually cause the social disorganization. How? Well, because if your community is the, is the, um, target of policies that vilify you and want to get rid of you, then you're going to be less civically engaged and so when I went about my studies and my research and I interviewed people and I asked them about how they felt about being deported or, you know, their feelings about being a person who is, um, susceptible to deportation, I expected to hear, you know, "I don't go out at night or I don't go out as often, or I'm careful when I drive and I make sure I don't drink. I don't use, um, public services. I don't talk to the police. I try to stay under the radar." And I did hear a lot of that, but I heard, much more often, to be honest, language that was symptomatic of trauma.
You know, people were talking about being depressed and it was stress and anxiety. A couple of people, talked about suicide.
That's when I started to think about, we have a public health crisis on our hands because my studies were done not during the Trump era, but the Obama era. Right? So, it really doesn't matter who's president, uh, if you have immigration enforcement policies that are vindictive and just punitive, it doesn't matter who's president, the person is going to feel it.
It just got worse over the Trump administration. And that's when I decided to go about the Belonging Study, because after the election you had all these campuses write letters of support to their students because, you know, there was a lot of threat of ICE coming onto campuses. So I just wanted to see whether or not the university was walking the walk, because they were talking the talk, right?.
Lisa
In this study that you did, it seems like what you're saying is that after Trump got elected, a lot of universities sent out messages to their students, particularly students who were immigrants, undocumented, saying, "you're safe with us. We care about you” affirming that they did have a place in the university, and so you wanted to look and see what an undocumented students experience was on a college campus.
Shirley
…and not just undocumented, any student who was not a citizen, because the fact is if you're not a citizen, you can be deported. If you are a green card holder, a legal, permanent resident or lawful permanent resident, however, they phrase it by the state um, you can still get deported.
I mean, you can get deported based on a misdemeanor offense, if you are a green card holder. So there is deportability, even if you are here with a green card.
I had people tell me, I would give a talk on my research and I would have people approach me and say, "I'm a, I'm a citizen. You know, I got my citizenship and I'm still nervous when I cross the border, or, I always think, oh my God, are they going to take my citizenship away?" So it wasn't just undocumented students. There was a lot of liminality in terms of how people were feeling with their status.
I believe that belonging is important. Right? To feel that you're part of something is beneficial and there's research to show that belonging contributes to healthier mental states; it helps self-esteem; it helps integration.
So, I really believe that that was a good place to look at in terms of trying to gauge a student's experience in the university and a student's sense of security and certainty in some very uncertain times. We all try to belong to something.
Nan
I remember this time-- we were so afraid that ICE would come on to campus and round up students. The fact that some students had enrolled in DACA, you know, it meant that the government had their names and addresses! If DACA wasn’t being respected, would its promise of protection be the thing that put students at risk? You know, I was teaching that same huge history class to the football players and I would just lie in bed at night at like 4am and plan what I’d do if ICE agents burst into my classroom to apprehend one of my students.
Lisa
Yeah, several of the faculty members in my program went through a training put on by a Latinx community organization that taught them how they could protect people if ICE came onto campus. That was also when students, staff, and faculty around the country started organizing to protect students from deportation. Remember they called for campuses to declare themselves “Sanctuary Campuses” which meant that they vowed to not cooperate with ICE, and some campuses actually did that.
Nan
Yeah, the Chancellor at UW Madison said she did not have the legal authority to keep ICE off campus, but that the administration would not assist or cooperate with ICE, so sort of threaded the needle.
Lisa
Shirley’s work really came out of this moment. And she decided to hone in on this question of belonging. So she asked students, “do you feel like you belong at CUNY?” And she asked about clubs they were a part of and college services they used. And she asked about their immigration status and if they were commuter students.
Our first conversation got cut short due to tech problems, but I called her again and asked in more detail about her research.
Shirley
You know, long-story-short, what we found was that there was a, uh, an association between students feeling a sense of belonging and their involvement with school activities. That was one. There was a connection between the level of belonging that a student felt and their immigration status.The students with less secure immigration status, those who are fully undocumented find that being CUNYstudents play a more important role in their identity than for those whose immigrant immigration status is more secure.
When I actually conducted the study and contextually what was happening, there was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment going on at the time. And there was a lot of insecurity with respect to DACA and even just anyone who was undocumented status. So the promises that were being made by school officials and administrators, professors, those with a less secure immigration status felt more of an investment in those promises.
Lisa
What kind of promises are we talking about?
Shirley
Well, for instance, you know, CUNY saying, we're going to protect you, but they couldn't say, and they weren't saying we're not going to allow ICE on campus; they stopped just short of that because they couldn't stop ICE from coming on campus if they had warrants or whatever the case may be in that sense.
But the fact that they were like, “we're behind you, we support you,” for instance, on our college campus, we had immigration clinics. We had attorneys coming in to help, um, students with, um, immigration questions that they had,
Lisa
If you had an undocumented student and ICE came in, would those people, providing those students, actually be able to prevent the student from being deported?
Shirley
Well, I mean, I think that with the amount of critical mass that we had, we could have. Right? We could have just formed a human chain and just barred them from doing it. But that didn't mean that we weren't going to get arrested for it, or, you know, legally speaking, they still could come in.
But the fact that is right, coming forward and saying, “we have your back,” then at that point, you know, the students were like, “then have our back,” right? If CUNY is going to talk the talk, then walk the walk you know, and that's what they will be relying on that; that's what they will, you know, going to hold the administrators accountable to.
In many instances, CUNY did a good job in, in having and supporting students. There were lapses, of course there were, um, some professors who were vocal about their opposition to immigrants but you know, the students are so awesome. There were protests at the campus of Brooklyn college against, you know, one particular professor who said really offensive things about immigrant students.
So, you know, the students were standing up for themselves
Lisa
Right so one of your findings is that students who were undocumented felt less, less of a sense of belonging, right? ...but then, also, I'm wondering about this activism, maybe creating a sense of belonging. Right? If the students get energized and they're part of something and they're part of a movement and a strike or a protest, and how that might actually flip the script a little bit.
Shirley
You know, it definitely moved them to be active, but there's something about having to fight for it. So I'm not sure if it contributed more to their sense of belonging, if you have to fight for it. I don't know if that makes sense, but it’s like, they definitely made their space, and they claimed their space, and they claimed their voices. But the fact that they had to do it in that manner, also speaks to the fact that they had to fight for that space.
Lisa
You don't feel a sense of belonging to an institution in which you're fighting to even get recognition, in which you have to mount a protest because professors are saying racist things about you.
Shirley
Exactly. You know, so having a fight for it almost puts a, like a, a little sour note to it
I'll read you two quotes from students that speak to this, right?
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So one says:
I'm an active member of the community in my institution. However, at times I do feel, as a non-citizen, that my opportunities are limited.
And another one wrote:
I identify myself with a group of non-citizen because I don't have any help for tuition. All is paid out of my pocket while being undocumented. The only work I could perform is construction, and I barely get enough money to eat, pay bills and attend college. It makes me feel like because of my status, I can't focus on the real aspect of attending college: learning. I become depressed thinking about the society around me. How is it making a barrier to young people like me?
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The language of being depressed, the language of, you know, where this person stands in the larger society, you know, all of that takes a toll, you know? And it's not just money, right? The fact that the lack of financial help — because of their status — plays a huge role in not just the sense of belonging, but also in their own self esteem. Because if you are part of the same institution, but you don't qualify for the same…anything as any other student, there's going to be a sense of isolation and being left out.
Lisa
It’s almost like a sense of second class citizenship. It seems like it's like.
Shirley
Absolutely. And it, and it's something that they feel regardless, right? And when it's perpetuated in the institution, by their lack of being able to qualify for certain things, you know, that just cements it for them.
Lisa
On the one hand, CUNY stands out among many institutions in the nation for the fact that it provides as much support as it does for undocumented students. So to hear this is just so striking to me that, the kind of flip side, that access is only one tiny piece of this puzzle. Right? You can have access to the institution,but if you don't have, um, true access to all parts of the institution, you're going to feel on the outside of it.
Shirley
Yeah, and like theoretical access is one thing, but in reality, the lack of access is, what happens. Seeing it from the point of view of like a public university like CUNY, just an undocumented status, does not preclude you from being able to attend college ever, right? It precludes you from obtaining some financial assistance, but if you're able to pay your tuition, then you can attend and you can get your degree. But what happens is, you know, I've encountered students, who've told me that at the registrar's office, they were told, "well, you can't, no, you can't register because you're not documented.” Right? “Cause you don't have a social security number."
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Not being able to fully integrate as a student in the institution, when those realities set in, then your identity, right, starts to form as well as like, you know, some students don't feel that they are a real college student, right? That's part of their identity, half student or part student, or a student adjacent or student with an asterisk, you know, all of those um, play a role and then there's the frustration and the depression that, that comes in as a, as a result during a time where, you know, most of these students are emerging adults. And then some of them are parents, ya know? Some of them are household providers, ya know, all of these different roles that our students occupy simultaneously while they attend college.
Maybe we shouldn't just, we shouldn't use the term non traditional student anymore that maybe all students are non-traditional, that there is an assumption that a college student is one that goes during the daytime and anyone else who doesn't go to school during those hours, or anyone else who isn't from the ages of 18 to 23 or anyone else who isn't, you know, doesn't, um, meet that picture, that historical picture for who a college student is…That’s just, that's just never been the case anyway and just acknowledging that and working to meet the needs of all of our students would make the student experience so much better.
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Nan
Lisa, this is interesting to me because the university itself actively creates the idea of the “traditional student” but then excludes people who are actually also students!… Students who are parents, students who work two (or more!) jobs, and the many students who live every day under threat of deportation. It makes almost everyone feel like they’re not the right kind of student.
Lisa
Exactly, and you know these threats to undocumented students are not going away. DACA is in limbo, Biden has shown a remarkable lack of compassion for immigrants and border-crossers and people seeking asylum. So while our universities might continue to shout “Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!” as loud as they can, they’re still completely silent on how to create a culture that truly reflects that. And a culture that reflects both the real diversity of the United States and the hardships that people face here.
You know, one of the reasons I was so interested in talking to Shirley is that I am married to someone who for years was undocumented. Now, we’re both white, and Canadian, and we speak English, and financially secure, so this is about as privileged as an undocumented person can be. But I was born in the US and had dual citizenship, and he didn’t.
So even with this mountain of privilege, we lied to get him into the country. And we’d travel separately across the border not to raise suspicion. And on every job application, he’d look for the box that asked for your social security number and realize he wasn’t going to qualify. He also lived in constant fear that he would get in an accident or get seriously hurt.
Our students are out there living these fears as well—and many that are so much worse. If we can’t figure out how to create an environment for these students to feel safe enough to live and learn on our campuses—then we’re not fulfilling our promises to them.
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Nan
Collegeland is produced by Craig Eley (EE-lee) and Jade Iseri (EYE-siri) Ramos (RAH-mos). Danyel Ferrari (DaeN-YEHL fer-AH-ree) is our researcher and publicist. Our theme music is by Josh Wilson. And the show is hosted by me, Nan Enstad, along with Lisa Levenstein.
A special thanks to North Carolina Humanities and the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies for their support.
We’re really excited about this season of Collegeland, and hope you are, too. If you made it this far, we would be so grateful if you could take a second to leave us a review and tell a friend about the show.
See you next time, in Collegeland.
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