Category: migrants

  • U.S. campuses are no longer safe spaces

    U.S. campuses are no longer safe spaces

    Leslie Ortega is pursuing her second bachelor’s degree in botany at a university in California. She earned her first degree in business administration back in December 2016. That was before U.S. President Donald Trump took office. The experience was much different then. 

    “Obama was president when I was in college from 2012-2016 and I remember how happy everyone was around me,” Ortega said. “There was an oblivious feel to it where we felt safe. Now being in school I notice that there is definitely more fear in classrooms.”

    With Trump in office for a second term, Ortega said she sees a major shift. It is no longer easy to be blind to the realities of how so many lives are changing. 

    “Existing in a world where your neighbor or your favorite food vendor can be snatched off the street on the basis of their skin color and occupation is impossible to hide from,” she said. “This has always been happening even during Obama but we had rose colored glasses when he was in office.”

    As someone who recently graduated two months ago with a bachelor of arts focused in ethnic studies, I have to agree with Ortega. I cannot ignore the current political state of the country, especially as students and universities remain potential targets of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. 

    An attack on diverse perspectives

    On top of that, conservatives are actively taking actions that threaten diversity, equity and Inclusion measures and certain subjects like critical race theory. My major, rooted in critical race theory, is deemed controversial by some because it teaches students to critically analyze information and question authority in a sense. Ethnic Studies courses are typically taught to engage people to uncover history from non-white perspectives, unveiling a legacy of imperialism and racism. 

    Actions that make it difficult to teach or learn these concepts are being enacted by people in power who seem to lack consideration for how marginalized communities will be affected. 

    At the California university I attended, two emails from the administration addressed the topic of immigration this past semester. The first was a letter from the interim president back in February 2025 which outlined guidance for university employees and students on how to interact with ICE officers if they ever showed up on campus. 

    It stated that since a large portion of the campus is open to the general public, it is therefore open to federal officers.

    However, ICE agents could not enter areas not open to the public such as residence halls, confidential meeting rooms, employee offices or classrooms while the university was in session. This email also outlined resources students and staff could turn to such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and a new center for “Dreamers” – undocumented people who had been brought into the United States as children. It also explained how to create an immigration preparedness plan. 

    A second email was sent out two months later, with quick guide cards and a link to an immigration resources page on the university website.

    Will campus be an unsafe haven?

    It is currently summer. How the university will actually respond if ICE were to show up on campus is really up in the air. It is one thing to voice concern and another to actually intervene in the face of injustice to protect targeted individuals. 

    While I will not return to campus this fall, I have no doubt that it will be students and staff of color who will ultimately serve as the first line of defense. Given how the university has responded in the past to student activist efforts, I would not be surprised if the campus administration did little should ICE arrive. 

    Across the country, university students have watched the detainment of student activists by ICE agents. Merely advocating against Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, has been deemed a crime worthy of detention and deportation.

    These detainees included Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk from Tufts University. Khalil spent more than three months in detention before his release on 20 June. 

    The arrests of students simply for speaking out angers students like Ortega. 

    “It is infuriating to hear about student’s visas being revoked for their stance on supporting Palestine during a presidency that criminalizes opposition to the status quo,” Ortega said. “[This is] referring to anyone that critiques American ideology, the military complex or simply the American flag.”

    Arrests in the City of Angels

    Los Angeles has seen a surge of undocumented immigrants being arrested. According to the Los Angeles Times, nearly 2,800 people have been picked up by masked ICE agents on the streets, at job sites, Home Depot parking lots and even outside immigration court hearings since 6 June 2025.

    Across the country these numbers could rise. In July, the U.S. Congress passed a national budget called the “Big Beautiful Bill” which will greatly increase the number of ICE agents and detention centers. 

    I view this bill as a way to cement discrimination against immigrants into the U.S. legal framework. We are already seeing the rapid construction and opening of detention centers such as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida – a tent city that can hold up to 3,000 people 

    According to public and internal data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, as collected by NBC News, more than 56,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers as of 1 Aug. 2025.

    All this has created a state of fear. I spoke to someone who lives in California and currently holds a student visa holder. I’m not identifying the person because of fear that doing so will make them a target. The student recently earned a master’s degree in education and is currently in the admission process to a teaching credential program. 

    “There’s a culture here [in the U.S.] that when they hear that you don’t have a social security number, they stop helping you as if you were a pariah,” the person said. “I couldn’t work on campus, I lost a lot of opportunities because I didn’t have a social security number. Sometimes I could get stipends or fellowships but it was because of people who understand immigrants.”

    Silencing of student activism

    They now have a work visa and hope to get permanent residency, but given all the threats the current presidential administration has made to student visa holders, they wonder about their prospects. 

    “The silencing of the student activists is sending a message to everyone that if you dissent, if you protest, if you do not agree with what’s going on right now, then there will be consequences,” they said. 

    They said they used to be politically active, but no longer feel safe to do so here, or at least to the same degree. 

    “There’s an executive order that says that the first thing they’re going to look at about you is your social media, so you cannot even post about what you think, what you defend,” they said. “You cannot talk about the ongoing genocide anymore, because then, all the money that you have invested in changing your migratory status will be thrown to the trash. You give all your money, that’s dispossession without violence, you make this enormous sacrifice and then you don’t want to lose it, right, so you are forced, you are silenced.”

    I am choosing to censor the person’s name for the sake of their own safety and wellbeing, I can’t help but wonder if doing so represents yet another way immigrants are silenced. 

    Fighting desensitization

    All of this is to say that being a person of color and a student during this presidential administration has been exceptionally difficult. That’s particularly true for someone like Ortega, who attends school in a predominantly White area.

    “It is emotionally and mentally draining to be focusing on your safety existing on a campus that doesn’t support you if you choose to wear a keffiyeh or a patch in opposition of a felon as a president,” Ortega said. 

    I recognize that as a person of color, I might not have the same advantages as someone who is White. As an American citizen though, I have some sense of protection in speaking up. But it is my Mexican and Guatemalan heritage that fuels my fight. 

    My existence is a result of immigration; I would not be where I am today if it were not for my family members who chose to come to the United States.

    While it can be easy to become desensitized, especially with a new devastating headline every day, I urge others to hold onto some sense of hope by leaning into community resistance. Only by letting go of the belief that “this doesn’t personally affect me, so I don’t care” can we truly begin to dismantle systems of power.

    Only seven months have passed since Trump returned to the presidential office. As he continues to carry out his seemingly racist agenda that targets anyone who is low-income, disabled, queer or non-White, university campuses that are supposed to be havens for learning and connecting with new ideas, are now filled with fear and suspense.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why are increasing numbers of university students in the United States afraid to speak out?

    2. Why do you think the author feels she doesn’t have the same protections as a U.S. citizen as someone who is White?

    3. Do you think that people who want to study in another country should be able to do so? 

     

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  • With a passport, you should be able to vacation abroad. No?

    With a passport, you should be able to vacation abroad. No?

    On a weekday in Kampala, people line up early outside the embassies of European countries. Last year, almost 18,000 Ugandans joined these queues, according to an analysis by the Lago Collective. This year, I was one of them, folder in hand, hope in check. 

    Typically, those folders contain bank statements, proof of visa payment, job contracts, medical records, photos of family members, land titles, academic transcripts, flight reservations and detailed itineraries — each one meant to prove stability, legitimacy and belonging. 

    After paying to apply for a Schengen visa — which allows free travel between some 29 European countries for a limited time period — 36% of those Ugandans were rejected. Why? Mostly because embassy officials doubted the applicants would return home.

    Each applicant must pay €90. That added up to more than €1.6 million that Ugandans paid Schengen countries last year, more than half a million of which was from applicants who ended up rejected. 

    The collective wager lost by Ugandan applicants was part of an estimated €60 million spent in Africa last year on Schengen visa applications that led nowhere. In fact, Africa alone accounted for nearly half of the €130 million the world paid in failed bids to enter the Schengen zone.

    The Schengen gate

    Tucked behind those numbers lies a quieter cost: missed opportunities for work or travel and the often-overlooked spending on legal consultations or third-party agencies hired to improve one’s chances. But more tellingly, there is a perception problem — wrapped in geopolitics and sealed with a stamp of denial.

    “It’s like betting,” says Dr. Samuel Kazibwe, a Ugandan academic and policy analyst. “Nobody forces you to pay those fees, yet you know there are chances of rejection.”

    One such story belongs to Fred Mwita Machage, a Tanzanian executive based in Uganda as human resource director at the country’s transitioning electricity distribution company. Machage thought he was just booking a summer getaway — a chance not only to unwind, but to affirm that someone like him, who had worked in Canada, had traveled to the United States and Great Britain, and, if you checked his profile, was “not a desperate traveler,” could move freely in the world. That belief, like the visa itself, did not survive the process.

    He had planned a trip to France the past April. Round-trip tickets? Booked. Five-star hotel? Paid. Travel insurance? Secured. A $70,000 bank statement and a letter from his employer accompanied other documents in the application.

    “They said I had not demonstrated financial capability,” Machage recalled, incredulous. “With my profile? That bank balance? It felt like an attack on my integrity.”

    Worse, the rejection wasn’t delivered with civility: “The embassy staff were rude,” he said. “And they weren’t even European — they were African. One of the ladies looked like a Rwandan. It felt like being slapped by your own.”

    Banned from travel

    For Machage, the betrayal was not just bureaucratic — it seemed personal. He estimates his total loss at nearly $12,000, including tickets, hotel deposits, agent fees and visa costs. While he hopes for a refund, it’s understood that most travel agents don’t return payments; instead, they often suggest that you travel to a visa-free country.

    That will likely get more difficult to do. This month, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a sweeping travel ban targeting twelve countries — seven in Africa. Somalia, Sudan, Chad and Eritrea faced full bans; Burundi, Sierra Leone and Togo, partial restrictions. The official reasons included high visa overstays, poor deportation cooperation from the home countries and weak systems for internal screening. And it ordered all U.S. embassies to stop issuing visas for students to come to the United States for education, although U.S. courts are considering the legality of that order.

    For Machage, the rejection left him with a lingering sense of humiliation, though he found some small relief in a LinkedIn post where hundreds shared similar tales of visa rejection.

    “I realised I wasn’t alone,” he said, “But the process still left me feeling worthless. Sorry to mention, but it’s a disgusting ordeal.”

    I know exactly how Machage feels.

    How to prove you will return home?

    When I applied for a visa to the United Kingdom, I too was rejected. The refusal read: 

    “In light of all of the above, I am not satisfied as to your intentions in wishing to travel to the UK now. I am not satisfied that you are genuinely seeking entry for a purpose that is permitted by the visitor routes, not satisfied that you will leave the UK at the end of the visit.”

    The “I am” who issued the rejection did not sign their name. Perhaps they knew I’d write this article and mention them. How easily the “I am” dismissed my ties, my plans, my story. Meanwhile, my British friend who had invited me was livid. 

    “It felt like they were questioning my judgment — about who I can and cannot welcome into my own home,” she said. She was angry not just on my behalf, but because she felt disregarded by her own government.

    Captain Francis Babu, a former Ugandan minister and seasoned political commentator, doesn’t take visa rejections personally. He said the situation is shaped by global anxieties over the scale of emigration out of Africa into Europe that has taken place over the past decade. 

    “Because of the boat people going into Europe from Africa and many other countries and the wars in the Middle East, that has caused a little problem with immigration in most countries,” he said.

    Needing, but rejecting immigrants

    The issue is complicated. Babu said that these countries depend on the immigrants they are trying to keep out. In the United States, for example, farms depend on low-cost workers from South America. 

    “Most of those developed countries, because of their industries and having made money in the service industry, want people to do their menial jobs. So they bring people in and underpay them,” Babu said. 

    For Babu, even the application process feels unfair. “Even applying for the visa by itself is a tall order,” he said. “There are people here making money just to help you fill the form.” 

    While Babu highlights the systemic hypocrisies and challenges, others, like Kazibwe, see hope in a different approach — one rooted in political and economic organisation. Where people enjoy strong public services and can rely on a social safety net, there tends to be low emigration so countries are less hesitant to admit them.

    “That’s why countries like Seychelles are not treated the same,” he explains. “It’s rare to see someone from Seychelles doing odd jobs in Europe, yet back home they enjoy free social services.”

    For Kazibwe, the long-term fix is clear: “The solution lies in organising our countries politically and economically so that receiving countries no longer see us as flight risks,” he said.

    Perhaps that is the hardest truth. Visa rejection is not just an administrative outcome, it’s a mirror: a verdict not simply on the individual but on the nation that issued their passport.

    Back at the embassies, the queues remain. Young Ugandans, Ghanaians and Nigerians — some with degrees, others with desperation — wait in line, folders in hand, their hopes in check. And every rejection carries not just a denied trip, but a deeper question:

    What does it mean when the world sees your passport and turns you away?

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why are so many Ugandans getting denied travel visas to Europe?

    2. Why do some people think that the visa and immigration policies of many Western nations are hypocritical?

    3. If you were to travel abroad, how would you prove that you didn’t intend to stay permanently in that country?

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  • TN Schools Could Exclude Immigrant Kids Without Legal Status in GOP-Backed Bill – The 74

    TN Schools Could Exclude Immigrant Kids Without Legal Status in GOP-Backed Bill – The 74


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    Tennessee lawmakers on Wednesday voted to advance a bill that would require public K-12 and charter schools to verify student immigration status and allow them to bar children who cannot prove they lawfully reside in the United States unless they pay tuition.

    The 5-4 vote by the Senate Education Committee came despite the Legislature’s own fiscal analysis, which said the proposed legislation “may jeopardize federal funding to the state and to local governments” and violate the federal Civil Rights Act, which specifically prohibits discrimination based on national origin in programs receiving federal dollars. Three Republicans joined the committee’s sole Democrat in voting “no.”

    Immediately after the vote was cast, shouts of “so shameful” and “that’s trash” erupted inside the hearing room. Others, including school-age children in attendance, streamed out of the room in tears.

    The bill (HB793/SB836) by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, and House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican, says that local school districts and public charter schools “shall require” students to provide one of three forms of documentation: proof of U.S. citizenship, proof the student is in the process of obtaining citizenship or proof they have legal immigration status or a visa.

    Students who lack one of the three forms of documentation could then be barred by their local school district from enrolling unless their parents paid tuition.

    Watson,  the bill’s sponsor, said he brought the measure in response to the increasing cost to the state of providing English-as-a-second-language instruction.

    “Remember, we are not talking about people who are here lawfully,” Watson said. “What I’m trying to discuss here is the financial burden that exists with what appears to be an increasing number of people who are not lawfully here.”

    In response to a question from Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, the sole Democrat on the panel, Watson said he had received no formal request from any school official to introduce the measure.

    “In an official capacity, this is one of those issues people do not talk about,” Watson said. “This is a very difficult bill to present. It is very difficult to have all these eyes on you.”

    “In an unofficial capacity at numerous events, have people mentioned this problem to me? Absolutely,” Watson said.

    Akbari responded: “I’m from the largest school district in the state. I have not had those conversations.”

    “I am offended by this legislation,” Akbari said. “I find that it is so antithetical to the very foundation of this country….This is saying that babies – you start school at five years old – that you do not deserve to be educated.”

    The bill’s sponsors have acknowledged the measure is likely to face a legal challenge if enacted. The proposed legislation, they have said, is intended to serve as a vehicle to potentially overturn the Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision, which established a constitutional right to a public school education for all children. The 1982 decision was decided by a 5-4 vote, Watson noted.

    “Many 5-4 decisions taken to the court today might have a different outcome,” Watson said.

    The proposed legislation is part of an unprecedented slate of immigration-related bills introduced in the Tennessee legislature this year as Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority seek to align with the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.

    Lee last month signed into law legislation to create a state immigration enforcement office to liaise with the Trump administration, create distinct driver’s licenses for noncitizens and levy felony charges at local elected officials who vote in favor of sanctuary policies.

    Among nearly three dozen other immigration-related bills still being considered is one to require hospitals that accept Medicaid payments to report on the immigration status of their patients. Another bill would open up charitable organizations, including churches, to lawsuits if they have provided housing services to an individual without permanent legal immigration status and that individual goes on to commit a crime.

    Following Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate Education Committee, hundreds congregated in a hallway of the Legislature, chanting “education for all” and pledged to return as the bill winds through the committee process.

    The bill “instills fear and hopelessness in these students,” said Ruby Aguilar, a Nashville teacher who testified against the bill during the hearing.  “Education is not merely a privilege, it is a shared human right every child should have access to.”

    Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: [email protected].


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