Fresno City College hosted a seminar to train campus employees to be prepared if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents come to campus. Eileen O’Hare-Anderson, an attorney with the Liebert Cassidy Whitmore law firm, led the training in the Old Administration Building’s auditorium for about 400 Fresno City College employees on Oct. 20.
What To Do If ICE Is On Campus
State Center Community College District employees were told during the training that they should report ICE activity to the college president and SCCCD police. According to O’Hare-Anderson, employees are not authorized to let ICE into non-public areas like classrooms and learning centers, and are permitted to lock room doors. Employees are also advised to use the panic button on college phones when necessary, as it will immediately dispatch an officer.
“If anyone calls us saying that there’s an immigration enforcement action on campus, we’re coming immediately,” SCCCD Police Chief Jose Flores told the Rampage. “Our duty is to verify that it is, in fact, an exigent immigration enforcement sent by the legitimate authorities.”
Attendees were told that if they see an ICE officer in a public area on campus, like grassy areas or the cafeteria, they are allowed to ask for that officer’s name and credentials. If they confirm that the person is an ICE officer, they are encouraged to escort them to the FCC president’s office in OAB-259 and call the emergency SCCCD police number, (559) 244-5911.
“We will invite them to follow our policies and the law, state law and our district policy says you will go to the president. They’re the only ones on this campus or their designee,” Flores said. “There’ll be a designee at the West Fresno Campus, the First Responder Campus, and there’ll be a designee in the evening.”
If the ICE officer shows faculty or students a valid warrant, they were instructed to still take the officer to the president’s office, as no one else is qualified to assess the warrant.
If the officer does not comply in going to the president’s office, then O’Hare-Anderson encouraged reporting their location to campus police and avoiding any physical confrontation with the officer. Even if the officer is getting physical with a student, O’Hare-Anderson advised to wait for campus police to arrive. Any ICE activity called in to the SCCCD police department will be treated as a “priority one call.”
“Be respectful and professional. I’ll settle for professional. If you don’t feel respectful, that’s fine. Be professional. Don’t lie, don’t mislead. You don’t have to answer questions, but you absolutely should not lie,” O’Hare-Anderson said.
O’Hare-Anderson admitted that it can be difficult to remember what to say while interacting with an ICE officer. For convenience’s sake, the seminar provided employees with “blue cards” that detail proper procedure for interacting with ICE agents.
Blue cards can be picked up from the library, Social Justice Center, and Dream Center.
The Laws
During the training, O’Hare-Anderson discussed several laws that inform the district’s recommendations regarding immigration officers.
Assembly Bill 21 was passed in 2017 and grants certain protections to students subject to immigration enforcement. The bill details that California college districts cannot share personal details of students or faculty without that person’s consent or without a warrant, court order, or subpoena.
If an immigration officer on campus has a warrant, then students, faculty and staff are still not authorized to allow the officer access to any non-public area, and must try to bring them to the college president’s office.
AB21 also guarantees that schools “Maintain a contact list of legal services providers who provide legal immigration representation, and provide it free of charge to any and all students who request it.” Fresno City College has the Dream Center which provides free immigration services to students and families in a confidential environment. There is also TRIO Student Support Services, which offers free legal services to students, staff and faculty.
Under the law, if an undocumented student on campus is subject to immigration enforcement, then the college must retain eligibility for financial aid, stipends, exemption from nonresident tuition fees, or other benefits they have been awarded or received. The college must also allow the student to re-enroll if they are forced to leave campus prematurely.
Senate Bill 98 requires that whenever immigration is confirmed to be on campus, the college must immediately notify all students, staff, faculty and campus community members of their presence, including the approximate time and location of their whereabouts. This notice must also include a hyperlink to appropriate immigration resources.
The California Values Act, aka Senate Bill 54 actively prohibits community college district police and security from investigating, interrogating, detaining or arresting anyone for immigration purposes. College police cannot assist immigration officers either, unless an individual has committed a serious crime like assault, battery, sexual abuse, etc.
According to O’Hare-Anderson, a new version of Administrative Regulation (AR) 3415 is being drafted, and it will include specific details for campus community members interacting with ICE.
The Rights of Students
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) limits the amount of public information a college district can disclose about a student. Students are allowed to opt-out of being in a directory information list.
Students or faculty who may be subject to an immigration order must have a designated point of contact where they can discuss their educational status. For Fresno City College, this would be the Dream Center or the college president’s office.
Every member of the campus community should be made aware of ICE presence on campus, as well as misinformation. On Oct. 21, many FCC students posted to Instagram that ICE had been recognized on campus. In response, students received a mass text message from the college at 12:41 p.m. which read: “Reports of ICE agents on campus has been investigated by PD. They appear to be a social media hoax, continue as normal.”
O’Hare-Anderson stressed the importance of accuracy, stating that false information will drop attendance.
Public and Non-Public Areas
According to the SCCCD admin regulations book code AR 3900, as of Oct. 2, 2023, areas of Fresno City College that are non-public areas include but aren’t limited to: campus offices, classrooms, conference rooms, hallways, lobbies, sports facilities, performance venues, warehouses, maintenance yards, libraries, locker rooms and exterior walls and fences.
These non-public areas restrict access to outside organizations, including immigration officers. However, there are some things that immigration officers are allowed to do on campus without court orders.
A judicial warrant is not required for an immigration officer to request access for information regarding an international student or faculty program. They can also look at I-9 forms, which are about employment eligibility and verification.
“HR does a very good job of keeping I-9’s in a place where an immigration agent would be able to verify the I-9’s and only the I-9’s. They are kept separate from personal files. They are in a separate immigration place, but maintained securely,” O’Hare-Anderson said.
Immigration officers can also be on campus if they are engaging in “non-enforcement activities.” This means that they can be present for sports games, performances or even take classes.
Comments from the College President
FCC President Denise Whisenhunt explained that all members of the executive cabinet have received similar training.
“Believe this is so critically important and so timely important in the space that we live in right now,” Whisenhunt said. “I think Martin Luther King said something in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that kind of resonates. He said that ‘I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.’”
