ATLANTA — Chalk graffiti supporting Donald Trump for president started to appear on stone stairways and wooden benches at the Emory University campus just around the time the school’s admissions office was preparing to send acceptance letters to successful applicants for this fall’s freshman class.
Among those potential new students, according to a university official, were several dozen undocumented immigrants with temporary residency status that exempts them from deportation under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
Emory is among a small but growing number of private universities and colleges that have joined many public ones in accepting DACA and other undocumented students, in part because more private donors are providing scholarships for them. There’s even a new project by a group of philanthropists to give undocumented students private loans to be repaid as a percentage of their future incomes. And young DACA recipients themselves, using apps and websites, have created digital networks of information about which schools will take them, what sources of money are available and more.
Yet now, almost as abruptly as they began, these developments among schools, donors and students are threatened by the tightened immigration policies promised during the campaign by President-elect Donald Trump — including the possible reversal of President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order establishing DACA in the first place.
Emory and other universities and colleges, some of which announced new policies on undocumented students only in the last few months, are now noisy with marches, protests and petitions demanding that these policies survive the Trump administration and that campuses be turned into “sanctuaries” for undocumented students.
More than 440 college and university presidents and chancellors, including Emory President Claire Sterk, recently signed a letter asking President-elect Trump to extend the DACA program. University and college leaders in California separately appealed to Mr. Trump to let undocumented students continue their educations without living in fear of being deported.
