Statement of Concern

At least twelve students have been deported from Wayne State University. 77 university students in the state of Michigan have been deported or forced to leave the country.

Many of the Wayne State students had their visas revoked. When they turned to the university for the support international students are entitled to expect, they were reportedly told to self-deport and leave the United States, or the university would report them to immigration authorities.

A university exists to educate its students and to protect their ability to learn. When an institution responds to students in crisis by threatening to report them, it breaks the trust on which campus life depends.

Students cannot learn, speak, or participate fully in a community that may turn them over to immigration enforcement.

If you didn’t know about this, that is not an accident. The institution will not protect students unless students call for it.

Our Demands

We call on the Wayne State University Administration to adopt the following policies.

Guarantee support for international students in crisis.

• Ensure no revocations of student visas for any student enrolled at Wayne State, extending to research students and student workers, and make commitments to supporting these individuals for the entirety of their schooling at WSU.
• Create a designated point of contact to advise students facing visa revocation or immigration proceedings.
• Provide referrals to qualified immigration legal counsel at no cost to the student.
• Restore in-state tuition and financial aid access for undocumented students, in states where that access has been lost, so that every student who has earned a place at the university can afford to remain there.

Establish Campus as a Place Where Students are Ensured Safety and Equal Protection No Matter Their Racial & Ethnic Background.

• End all voluntary cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and with any police department assisting ICE in immigration enforcement.
• Deny ICE agents access to campus grounds and facilities unless they present a valid judicial warrant, reviewed by the university's legal counsel before any access is granted.
• Prohibit university employees from sharing student information with immigration authorities except where compelled by a valid court order.
• Adopt a written policy that no student will be threatened with reporting to immigration authorities as a means of pressuring them to leave.

Rationale

Sanctuary policies are consistent with the university's mission and with its own stated commitment to student wellbeing. Other institutions have adopted comparable protections, which demonstrates that such policies are workable. A clear, public policy protects students, reassures families, and affirms that the university stands with the people it enrolls. You can’t stop this alone; together we can.

Twelve deportations from this campus are not an abstraction. Each was a student with coursework, friends, and a future here. The university has both the authority and the responsibility to act so that no further student is lost this way.

Learn more about our organization, how to get involved, and our other demands on Instagram @sdswsu

 

National Students for a Democratic Society’s (2025) Resolution is provided below.

 

SDS Fights for Immigrants’ Rights!

WHEREAS: Student activists such as Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident, was victimized by ICE for exercising their First Amendment rights, setting dangerous precedent for any immigrant who speaks out against the government.

WHEREAS: On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court empowered ICE to conduct immigration stops based solely on race, exposing Chicanos, Mexicanos, Centroamericanos, and every other Latin American, with and without papers, to ICE repression.

WHEREAS: On July 4th, 2025, Trump’s government voted to dramatically increase ICE’s budget with the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, tripling its budget and increasing its capacity for terror.

WHEREAS: The illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with mixed legal status, which set a dangerous precedent for the millions of mixed-status families living in the United States.

WHEREAS: Deportees are now confined into newly-built ICE detention centers, where deportees are subjected to barbaric and inhumane living conditions. These include prisons such as “Alligator Alcatraz”, “The Dungeon”, “Speedway Slammer” and “Cornhusker Clink”.

WHEREAS: Many deportees have been sent outside of their original homelands and dumped into prisons, war-zones and open-air detention camps. These souls have uncertain fates.

WHEREAS: On January 20th, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14190, threatening to abolish birthright citizenship and create a permanent stratum of second class citizens.

WHEREAS: ICE has expanded the repression into primary and secondary schools, converting classrooms and playgrounds into places of terror and annulling the very concept of “sensitive locations”.

WHEREAS: Many college students, in particular those who are first or second generation immigrants, hail from mixed-status families and live one door knock away from the disappearance of loved ones.

WHEREAS: In certain states such as Texas, undocumented students have been denied access to in-state tuition and financial aid, locking many out of higher education entirely.

WHEREAS: Last summer, we saw millions of people take to the streets in the defence of immigrants’ rights, with many students leading walk-outs and highway shutdowns throughout the United States.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT NATIONAL SDS:

Oppose all further expansions of ICE terror, in particular at the university and its environs;

Call upon local SDS chapters to protect their immigrant classmates, especially those who may be targeted in retaliation for exercising their constitutional right to protest;

Call upon local SDS chapters to demand that their campuses become “Sanctuary Campuses”, where universities cease cooperation with ICE and police departments who assist them, and where campus grounds are denied access by ICE agents without a valid judicial warrant;

Call upon local SDS chapters to demand that their universities restore in-state tuition and financial aid access for undocumented students, in states where such access have been lost;

Release national statements if and when further attacks on immigrants’ rights and students occur throughout the year;

Hold National Days of Action in defence of immigrants’ rights and our classmates!