The University of California vowed Thursday to continue providing generous support services for immigrant students after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Trump move to rescind DACA protections.
The University of California vowed Thursday to continue leading the way in supporting immigrant students, hours after the U. S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s plan to rescind temporary protections for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
UC President Janet Napolitano and Board of Regents Chair John A. Pérez hailed the court decision in a case that the UC system first brought in 2017 and said the university would continue to provide its generous immigrant support services, including the nation’s first free legal services center for students without legal status.
“They still have special needs, particularly in the current environment, and we want to make sure that we are supporting them even as they pursue their university educations,” Napolitano said in a teleconference Thursday.
The 10-campus UC system enrolls an estimated 4,000 such students, but it is unknown how many of them qualified for the temporary protection from deportation and the right to a work permit under the program at issue, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Napolitano crafted that program in 2012 as Homeland Security secretary, benefiting immigrants who were bought to the United States illegally before age 16, attended school and stayed out of trouble. Those beneficiaries became known as “Dreamers.”
Pérez noted that California has long been in the forefront of immigrant a cause he said he marched for as a 15-year-old student in the 1980s.
