Demands from the International Student Working Group of Student Workers of Columbia – UAW Local 2710
Updated March 18, 2025
This month, the Department of Homeland Security abducted former union member Mahmoud Khalil while in a Columbia University apartment building and unjustly revoked the visa of current member Ranjani Srinivasan. Amid ongoing presence of ICE agents around campus, the International Students Working Group of the Student Workers of Columbia makes these immediate demands of Columbia University. These were presented and approved at the March 17 General Body Meeting, the highest decision-making body of SWC.
- Establish Columbia University as a sanctuary campus in which every student is protected from threat of deportation or detention. We define a sanctuary campus to mean the following: A commitment not to allow ICE officers on campus or into University Housing without a judicial warrant under any circumstance and to inform all security personnel and other staff of this policy. Refuse to provide information to immigration authorities or any federal agency on Columbia affiliates without a subpoena.
- Stop surveilling the student body and do not allow previous surveillance to be used by federal agencies currently targeting non-citizens. Specifically, we demand the University:
a. Order Public Safety and private contractors to cease collecting personally identifying information of Columbia affiliates in relation to protest activity,
b. Destroy all records of personally identifying information collected of Columbia affiliates in relation to protest activity, including those collected as evidence for disciplinary proceedings,
c. Order Public Safety and private contractors to stop patrolling departmental and organizing spaces on campus, including classrooms.
3. Support the non-US citizens on our campus through education on non-citizen rights, financial resources, academic flexibility, legal support for students, and more. Specifically:
a. Disseminate “know your rights” information for all students through broad and consistent messaging.
b. Commit not to use immigration status as leverage to coerce student workers into disciplinary proceedings.
c. Increase the International Students and Scholars Office’s (ISSO) resources to support students whose Visas and Green Cards have been revoked by maintaining an emergency hotline, assisting in appeals, covering legal fees, and allowing continued residency in University housing during appeals, and maintaining their non-immigrant visa status.
d. Assure degree conferral, including through alternative routes in case of administrative impediments.
e. Proactively arrange the retention of legal counsel for any Columbia affiliate detained or threatened by ICE.
f. Commit to reissuing DS-2019 and/or I-20s for all international students when visa status is revoked. Overall, commit to ensuring that all international students are able to maintain their student status within the university.
g. Grant instructors flexibility to move classes online, for students to confidentially demand hybrid instruction, and for staff to work from home and ensure the new Anti-Doxxing and Online Harassment policy supports them
4. Defend the non-US citizen students on our campus by taking actions to resist their targeting by the Trump administration and other anti-immigrant actors. Specifically:
a. File a lawsuit to have Trump’s January 29th Executive Order 13899 revoked or halted.
b. Designate the reporting of other Columbia affiliates to immigration authorities based on their perceived or assumed immigration status as a form of discriminatory harassment.
c. Notify students whose names are provided by the government to the University as targets for detention and of any government agency’s search, arrest, administrative warrant, subpoena, or other formal or informal request for documents or information on a student/
d. Protect students who have already been disciplined for political protest by reinstating, re-enrolling, un-expelling, etc students who have already been disciplined.
