Harold Washington College first-year student Zaure Bakytbekova has been worried about more than assignments and test scores lately.
She replays the months last fall when federal immigration agents, often masked and armed, dragged people off the streets in Chicago and tear-gassed protesters who criticized the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Colleges were not immune. Agents detained an Elgin Community College student in a campus parking lot in September. A few weeks later, agents detained a woman just off the University of Illinois Chicago campus, sparking a student protest.
Federal officials threatened to return in greater force this spring.
Those threats haven’t materialized, but to be safe, Bakytbekova has continued the habits she picked up when U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino and his agents were stomping through the city, detaining immigrants like herself by the thousands.
“This could happen to everybody,” she said.
Bakytbekova, who is in the U.S. on a student visa, carefully prepares all her routes before leaving her apartment, vigilantly carries her ID and other documentation everywhere and asks her brother or sister-in-law to drive her around to lessen her chances of being stopped on foot.
“I always had this stress every day going out of my apartment,” she said.
Illinois legislators passed a law last December aimed at protecting students like Bakytbekova. It requires public colleges and universities to establish protocols for what to do if immigration agents come on campus, and to provide students with certain information about how to respond.
Though some schools did this on their own before and other states like California have issued guidance, Illinois is perhaps the only state that legally requires public colleges to have policies surrounding immigration enforcement on college campuses. Immigrant rights advocates have touted the law as a model that other states could adopt.
But a Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ investigation found that four months after requirements for public colleges went into effect, many fell short of meeting their conditions.
The Sun-Times and WBEZ reached out to all 12 public universities in the state and a dozen community college systems in the Chicago region and found most failed to spell out their protocols for documenting interactions with immigration agents and notifying students and staff if immigration agents are looking for them.
Three colleges failed to list a contact on their website to report immigration agents on campus, perhaps the most useful piece of the law for students. And many college students said they had no idea their school was supposed to have these protocols in place by Jan. 1.
That has some students and immigration rights advocates, like the Latino Policy Forum’s higher education director Jennifer Juárez, concerned that immigrant students aren’t getting the protections that lawmakers intended.
“That is pretty alarming,” she said about the Sun-Times and WBEZ’s findings. “[This is] the safety of our students. And I know our students were very vocal about not feeling safe going to campus or not feeling that their institution had the right protocols.”
Many public colleges lack protocols required under new state law
Many students and staff say their college or university didn’t do much to inform people on campus about updated policies or other ways they’d responded to the passage of the bill, HB1312.
Emilia Mancero is a senior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who grew up in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood. Despite being heavily involved in immigration advocacy on campus, she said she didn’t know about the law or her school’s procedures until a Sun-Times reporter informed her.
“I think that there definitely needs to be more materials distributed to students,” said Mancero, who is the president of an on-campus group called Illinois-Coalition Assisting Undocumented Students’ Education. “I knew that the school was doing something, and I think that that was OK, but I think there just needs to be more transparency, and I’ve been advocating for that.”
Across Illinois, there are more than 27,000 undocumented college students and more than 64,000 international students who need a visa to study in the U.S., according to a data tracker maintained by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nationwide group of college leaders that advocates for immigrant students. Together they represent around 1 in 10 college students statewide.
Though federal immigration activity is quieter and less visible right now, Mancero said the undocumented and other immigrant students she works with are still fearful, and they would benefit from hearing more about their school’s protocols.
“It can be really hard to already deal with everything that you have to deal with being undocumented, but on top of that, adding that layer of political pressure and just animosity in the world toward your own existence as a student, as a person,” Mancero said. “We don’t know when it’s going to go away, if it’s going to come back, but we know that what you do have right now is this education.”
Illinois lawmakers hoped to relieve some of that pressure when they passed HB1312.
Under the law, public colleges are required to identify a person or department that will handle reports of immigration agents on campus and consult with lawyers. Public colleges are barred from disclosing a student or employee’s immigration status unless required by a warrant signed by a federal judge. Colleges also have to keep records on interactions with agents, notify students or staff if immigration agents are looking for them and display a contact on their website that students and staff can reach if agents are spotted on campus.
But many schools aren’t doing all of that.
Of the 24 schools that provided their procedures, only the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Illinois Chicago, Illinois State University and Elgin Community College followed all four requirements for how to handle immigration agents on campus, according to a Sun-Times/WBEZ review of the schools’ websites and internal procedures.
Alex Hagan, a graduate student and teaching assistant at UIC, said he’s noticed a shift on campus since the law went into effect.
UIC handed out cards that encourages students to call the university’s police department if they see immigration agents on campus, said Hagan, who is also an organizer with Sanctuary for All, which advocates for UIC’s immigrant students.
He also noticed more immigration know-your-rights sessions held on campus, though he wants them to be mandatory for students and offered in several languages. HB1312 says schools can’t block students and staff from participating in immigration-related training, but the law stops short of requiring them.
“While posting things on a website is in compliance with this, we really think there should be more of an effort [by UIC] to be bringing people in,” Hagan said.
Gioconda Guerra Pérez, the interim vice chancellor for access, civil rights and community at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said the school built on its existing procedures for handling immigration enforcement to comply with HB1312.
Last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz taught administrators more about what students and staff needed to feel safe, she said, and they incorporated those takeaways into the updated policy.
Before, administrators generally knew how to handle immigration enforcement concerns. But the Trump administration’s aggressive and fast-moving enforcement tactics made Pérez realize faculty, staff and students needed more information, she said. So administrators shared an infographic with key points and offered workshops to employees and students about how the college was handling enforcement.
She also wanted to make sure students knew their privacy was protected by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the school wouldn’t share their immigration status, Social Security number, address or other private information with immigration agents. That was posted alongside other immigration information on the college’s website.
“The safety of our students, making sure that our campus is a welcoming and accessible environment for all,” were the priorities, said Pérez, who is also an undocumented student liaison.
Some schools went beyond the law and provided help that wasn’t mandated, like a “frequently asked questions” section and resources in Spanish and other languages. Some schools, like Waubonsee Community College, used language that was especially sensitive to vulnerable students and others, like the College of DuPage, offered extra tips for staff working with immigrant students.
On the other hand, the City Colleges of Chicago, Oakton Community College and Harper Community College in the northwest suburbs and Western Illinois University in Macomb each failed to meet three of the four key requirements.
City Colleges, which runs seven community colleges across the city and enrolls around 70,000 students, designated the security director to handle reports of immigration agents on campus. But the procedures provided to the Sun-Times and WBEZ don’t lay out how staff will document interactions with immigration agents or notify staff or students if agents are looking for information about them. And there’s no contact specifically for reporting sightings of agents on the school system’s website.
Veronica Resa, a spokesperson for City Colleges, pointed to the general phone number on each campus’ website for the safety and security office. But there’s no indication students and staff should call that number to report immigration enforcement activity.
“As a welcoming college community, City Colleges follows city and state laws regarding immigration enforcement,” Resa said in a statement “City Colleges has kept its messaging simple: Security takes the lead. Students, faculty and staff should contact college security if they encounter immigration enforcement.”
At Harold Washington, which is part of the City Colleges system, Bakytbekova said she wasn’t aware of a way to report immigration agents on campus. She’s often had to seek out information from her school about being an immigrant on campus because it isn’t readily available.
“They would give out some information, but only if I was the one who was approaching [and] researching about this information,” Bakytbekova said. “But I know many students are not aware that these resources are available.”
Oakton and Harper community colleges both listed a phone number on their websites to call if an agent showed up on campus.
But the procedures they shared with the Sun-Times/WBEZ don’t mention how the college would document interactions with immigration agents or inform students and staff if agents were looking for them. There’s also no department or team designated to handle reports of immigration agents on campus and consult with lawyers.
Harper administrators disagreed with the Sun-Times and WBEZ’s findings. A spokesperson said the college has processes “embedded in established roles and standard operating practices” that comply with the requirements in HB1312.
“Harper College remains committed to maintaining a safe, supportive and welcoming environment for all students, including our immigrant and undocumented students, with support including ‘Know Your Rights’ programming, free immigration legal services, targeted support and access to counseling, wellness and basic needs resources,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Oakton said the requirements are met in its internal policies, which a spokesperson wouldn’t share, citing security concerns.
A Western Illinois University spokesperson said the college had met the four requirements analyzed by the Sun-Times/WBEZ by listing the Office of Public Safety’s phone number on a webpage listing supports for undocumented students.
Meanwhile, Morton College in west suburban Cicero provided information through an open records request in March that met three of the four requirements tracked in the Sun-Times/WBEZ analysis. But as of Tuesday, several protocols were no longer available on the college’s website. A public information officer did not respond to questions about where the information had gone.
Colleges should step up communication about law, students say
Students and experts said while Illinois’ law may help some immigrant students feel better protected, there’s more work to be done, particularly around getting the word out about what information students are entitled to and how to find it.
Mancero, for example, said the climate at U. of I. has improved since the fall, when she and other students worried federal agents would come to campus, so they posted signs on classroom doors indicating they were private spaces and agents couldn’t come inside.
She applauds the state for requiring public colleges to have procedures in place, but she wants schools to do more to communicate what they are to students and staff.
“Had I received that in an email or a public announcement about it, I think it would have come across so much better to so many people,” Mancero said. “I’m frustrated that I didn’t hear about it before.”
That’s a known hurdle, said Juárez at the Latino Policy Forum. To help, her organization is making videos breaking down the law to share with students.
And while the law doesn’t require colleges to mark which parts of campus are considered private and therefore off-limits to federal agents, Hagan and others would like colleges to hang more signs that makes it clear which spaces are private, such as classrooms or buildings that require a student ID to enter.
There are other ways colleges could improve: Some schools buried important information, like who to contact if agents are seen on campus, deep on their sites. Others provided information that was unclear or unhelpful.
For example, some colleges referred to federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, the most conversational and ubiquitous term. But others used terms that could be confusing like “external law enforcement” or “non-WIU law enforcement agent.”
Many colleges designated their own police department as the point of contact that handles reports of agents on campus. Under the Illinois TRUST Act, campus police forces are prohibited from working with federal agents.
But many students don’t know that, and students of color can have fraught relationships with police stemming from decades of police brutality and racial discrimination, said Hagan, the UIC grad student. So having police respond to a situation involving immigration agents can feel “contradictory,” he said.
“It certainly seems like there might be better resources or a better department that could be formed that is more community-based and student-centered,” he said.
Some schools, like Elgin Community College, offered an alternative number if students don’t feel comfortable calling the police.
Hagan said while a law like HB1312 is a good first step, schools need to follow the requirements, and be held accountable if they don’t, to offer meaningful protection for international and undocumented students.
The law says students and employees can file a civil lawsuit against their college if the school fails to follow certain parts of the law. And the state Legislature, which controls public university budgets, could choose to withhold funding from colleges that fail to comply, said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which advocated for parts of the law.
There’s still time for schools to tweak their procedures. The state higher education boards will compile and release them publicly by July 1, according to the law.
But Juárez said it’s in the schools’ best interest to implement these policies — not just because it’s legally required, but because they could lose students if they don’t. Several students left school during Operation Midway Blitz because they didn’t feel safe, she said.
Mancero said it’s comforting to be at the U. of I., one of the schools that best complies with the law. But that doesn’t mean her work as an advocate for immigrants on campus is done.
“I’m thankful that we’re one of the better ones,” Mancero said. “But I think there’s always more to do.”
Mary Norkol and Lisa Kurian Philip cover higher education for the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus.
