Back in January, the Trump administration revoked an Obama era memorandum preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting enforcement actions in certain areas, such as schools, hospitals and places of worship.

The lifting of these protections left colleges and universities around the country in uncertain territory in terms of how to respond to potential on-campus ICE raids.

Molly Bohannon, a reporter with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, took a look at Arizona’s 20 higher education institutions with the largest in-person enrollments, and found they vary widely in their approaches — and in some cases, lack explicit policies for what to do if ICE agents show up.

The Show spoke with her about her reporting, and started by talking about the legal gray area created by Trump’s revocation of the Obama administration’s policy.

Full conversation

MOLLY BOHANNON: A lot of college campuses have what experts consider public and non-public areas or private areas. So, a lot of what experts told me was that areas where students or faculty would typically need ID cards to get in are considered non-public.

So, that’s that’s still an area where ICE or any immigration officials need a judicial warrant to be signed to get access to, but public areas like anywhere you or I could just walk onto campus at Arizona State or University of Arizona, those are public areas, so ICE can now take enforcement actions in those areas without any needed warrant or anything.

SAM DINGMAN: But that seems like it could get tricky pretty quickly because like I’ve done stories at ASU and I have been able to freely walk onto the campus and in some cases freely walk into academic buildings, and I don’t have an ASU ID.

BOHANNON: Yeah, it can definitely get sticky, which is kind of why experts are recommending schools have policies or issue guidance and kind of make known to employees, students, students, staff, kind of anyone who might sit at a desk and, you know, let people walk in or out to know like, you know, that can kind of cause some issues.

DINGMAN: Yeah, well, so this gets to the crux of your piece, which is that because of this uncertainty, you reached out to ASU, asked them what their plans were in terms of how to address the situation.

What did they tell you?

BOHANNON: They did not share a lot of information, so we reached out to the 20 largest higher ed campuses in the state. Arizona State didn’t really have a lot to say. They didn’t answer our public records requests. It’s still unanswered.

Almost two months later, a spokesperson for them said, you know, we would work with ICE officials the same way we would work with any non-ASU police. You know, there is an online policy about what to do if you see non-ASU law enforcement on campus, but it’s just kind of vague and says, you know, call ASUPD and steer clear of the situation, basically.

So, that’s the best guidance I could find from them, but from the students I talked to, some faculty I talked to, they hadn’t really heard any communication from ASU about it.

DINGMAN: And would it be fair to say that the response you got from UA, just sticking with the biggest universities for the moment, was in a similar vein?

BOHANNON: Yeah, they more directly pointed towards their non-university law enforcement policy. They said, you know, we have this in place, it does apply to federal immigration officers, if they’re on campus, but when I asked, you know, have you sent this out to faculty and said this applies, their spokesperson just kind of said, well, it’s clear.

DINGMAN: Right. And notably, if I remember correctly, they had last updated their policy in 2019.

BOHANNON: Yes, that’s what they told me.

DINGMAN: So, from the standpoint of the students and advocacy groups that you spoke to, they would like to see these universities taking a much more proactive approach in terms of communicating who might be vulnerable.

BOHANNON: Yeah, definitely, students I talked to largely like you said, in advocacy groups, they’re feeling anxious, they’re feeling worried. A lot of them are from mixed status families, which means maybe they have undocumented parents, but they themselves have legal status.

And we haven’t seen this in Arizona. I think that’s important, like, there has not been officials on campus at this point, but experts are worried about it. The Trump administration is putting a lot more money towards DHS and towards ICE and immigration. So they’re worried about this.

It’s happened in other states, but kind of what I was hearing from students is that There’s a sense of anxiety and a sense of fear about even just coming to campus sometimes, they feel like an acknowledgement from the university, even if it is just an acknowledgement and saying, you know, here’s our general vague policy, that that could help kind of ease that anxiety and fear.

DINGMAN: Right. There are some institutions, however, that have taken that approach, right?

BOHANNON: Yeah, all of the Maricopa Community Colleges, they kind of sent out a district-wide guidance policy, so that applies to their 10 schools. They implemented a kind of point of contact system, so there are some people trained on each campus who they said, you know, if an official comes to you and requests access to a classroom, that is a non-public area, call this person.

Pima Community College put out, down in Tucson, put out a pretty lengthy FAQ guidance document for students, and then one for staff that gave, you know, pretty thorough, like, here are your rights, here’s what to say if you see an official on campus, here’s who to call, here’s who to call if they talk to you.

Northern Arizona University and Arizona Western College both kind of put out a little less intensive, but still, you know, more than we’ve seen at other campuses saying, here’s maybe a script to say, and here’s a reminder of what’s public and non-public.

DINGMAN: And I should say just quickly before we continue, our KJZZ studios are on the campus of Rio Salado Community College, part of the Maricopa Community Colleges District. 

It seems like it must be a difficult line to walk for these institutions that have sent out proactive communication because you don’t want to create a sense of fear.

BOHANNON: I spoke to the faculty Senate president, chair of the faculty senate down at the University of Arizona. She was understanding and that she said, hopefully, if they’re being silent about this, it means that there’s a game plan behind the scenes, and maybe they’ll make their plan known should this arise.

DINGMAN: Hopefully and maybe doing a lot of work.

BOHANNON: Hopefully and maybe. And again, I did, I requested any information internally or externally from the University of Arizona, from all of these schools, even if it was just kind of internal, should we have a policy documents, messages, things like that. They said they had nothing.

These universities are in hard positions, they’re trying to not draw attention if it’s not on them. It is a sense of, you know, you don’t want to act like this could be a problem, it’s not going to be, but we’ve seen it across the country. Officials are getting really close to campuses. They’re going on campus and residence halls in some places.

So, you know, one expert I spoke to made clear like, this is something that colleges shouldn’t wait to address. They should be proactive about because it’s going to be easier to solve if it does happen, rather than to retroactively say, here’s what we should have done.

DINGMAN: Right. And of course we have seen the Trump administration not be shy about directly targeting colleges and universities who they feel have run afoul of their values.

Lastly, Molly, you spoke to some individual students who you quoted in your piece. What sense did you get from them about the state of mind that they were in on campus in this moment?

BOHANNON: Yeah, students were worried. A lot of them wanted to hear from leadership directly, saying things like we have your back, like we’re here for you, and students seem to be just a little frustrated at the silence from their leadership, wanting more.

Some students at the University of Arizona put together a petition in February, asking the school to kind of make their stance known, take a stance against working with ICE unless there’s a warrant involved, and you know, as of now, seven months later, we still don’t have that kind of policy.

One student, I thought it was interesting, she talked about at ASU talked about how, you know, it’s important to have these policies in place to prevent or to have guidance in place to prevent confusion and chaos on campus, and to protect the safety of students, but she also made a point to say like, this protects officers who come on campus, this protects the officials, like, it just limits the overall harm, and she wanted to see that from the university.

KJZZ is licensed to the Maricopa County Community College District.

KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.