Falling Short of Sanctuary:
Understanding the Limitations of UC Protections for Immigrant and International Community Members

For a shorter version, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.

“Sanctuary,” the Basic Idea

A sanctuary policy commits an institution, where it has a legal choice, to decline to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts. This is the bare minimum: refusing voluntary complicity. The University of California (UC) has not adopted this basic principle. It should.

A sanctuary policy cannot itself stop the federal government from surveilling, detaining, or deporting someone on its own in any one case. However, noncooperation can slow those efforts and limit their scale by requiring the federal government to rely entirely on its own resources. This dependence on institutional complicity to achieve mass deportations is why the federal government is so hostile to sanctuary policies that withhold the cooperation it needs.

The Strengths and Limits of Current UC Policy

The UC adopted a limited sanctuary policy during the first Trump administration and recently reaffirmed it. This policy (“University of California Statement of Principles in Support of Undocumented Members of the UC Community”) focuses especially on undocumented community members and on UC Police Department (UCPD) collaboration with ICE or other law enforcement agencies working with ICE. It generally prohibits UCPD from itself enforcing federal immigration law or making stops on the basis of or to discover immigration status. With some exceptions, the policy also bars UCPD from acting on civil ICE “detainer” requests for UCPD to extend and transfer custody to ICE rather than release someone from UCPD custody. This UC policy is stronger than the statewide restrictions on law enforcement collaboration established by SB 54, the California Values Act (also known as “Sanctuary State”). Like most such policies, it generally contains provisos accepting cooperation where “required by [federal] law.” 

The main limitation of the “Statement of Principles” is its narrow focus on UCPD. This leaves out a variety of other ways in which ICE might seek UC cooperation in immigration enforcement. Nor does the “Statement of Principles” account for the second Trump administration’s new emphasis on detaining and deporting noncitizens with legal status, in addition to undocumented people, including ideologically-driven deportations and efforts targeting international students and researchers as part of its broader assault on higher education.

For instance, one critical issue concerns ICE’s ability to enter UC buildings to detain people. Generally speaking, UC, like any property owner, has no obligation to admit federal agents to non-public areas without a valid judicial warrant. ICE typically lacks such warrants, relying instead on administrative warrants that do not compel entry. Thus, the UC generally can refuse entry to classrooms, dormitories, laboratories, and the like, unless ICE has a judicial warrant. The UC’s recently published FAQs recognize this point with regard to front-line faculty and staff, directing us to “inform the officer that you are not obstructing their process but need to contact Campus/Medical Center Counsel for assistance and contact Campus Counsel before granting access.” The gaping hole, however, is that the UC provides no assurances that it will deny ICE access to the maximum extent allowed by law once the question reaches Campus Counsel. The June 10, 2025 message from EVC/Provost Hunt, Vice Chancellor Gorden, and Associate Vice Chancellor Lurie, while containing reassuring language, contained no additional commitments beyond the UC policies described here. 

Similar gaps afflict UC’s policy on ICE information requests. Such requests might allow ICE to locate people it has already targeted for detention, by learning their office, lab, dorm, or class locations. Or ICE requests could be used to choose targets, such as by obtaining names reflected in disciplinary or UCPD arrest records, or in documentation of affiliations with campus organizations disfavored by the Trump administration, and so on. The recent Executive Order 14188, for instance, specifically calls on universities to surveil and report community members active in Palestine solidarity work, including to facilitate deportations on the supposed “foreign policy” grounds invoked against Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, among others. UC guidance calls for escalation to Campus Counsel before complying with immigration-related information requests, but UC again provides no assurance that it will deny such requests to the extent allowed by law, such as in the absence of a judicial subpoena. The UC guidance also leans heavily on compliance with privacy laws, rather than a principle of refusing voluntary complicity. Worrisomely, that framing suggests that UC may more readily comply with requests that might not implicate privacy laws but still endanger community members.

A recent report from California Attorney General Rob Bonta thoroughly assesses these topics of physical access and information requests. Its model policies reflect, and develop in detail, the basic principle of declining voluntary cooperation, the legality of which consistently has been upheld. UC should fully adopt this approach. A recent ACLU letter also provides detailed guidance on resisting ICE administrative subpoenas.

Sanctuary Is a Labor Issue

The UC violates its responsibilities to its workers and makes our workplaces less safe when it voluntarily exposes employees to immigration detention and potential deportation. Nationally, labor unions have been in the forefront of negotiating contracts with “sanctuary workplace” policies like those UC currently lacks. Some limited protections are included in the recently negotiated UC-UAW contracts for TAs, GSRs, and postdocs. In California, the Legislature in 2017 mandated workplace sanctuary polices under AB 450, the Immigrant Worker Protection Act. AB 450 required employers to refuse “voluntary consent” to ICE access to nonpublic work areas or to ICE information requests for employee records. AB 450 also required employers to give workers advance notice of certain ICE inspections of records that employers are obligated to permit. Unfortunately, the courts struck down AB 450’s “voluntary consent” provisions with regard to private sector employers. However, that lawsuit did not challenge AB 450’s application to public employers like the UC, so the UC still should be bound by it, as Attorney General Bonta recently affirmed. The UC should commit to following these AB 450 standards already endorsed by our state Legislature.

Beyond the Basics

Avoiding active complicity is the bare minimum. But the UC can do more. Possibilities include the following.

• Providing more robust legal support. The UC currently supports the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center, but the needs under the current Administration far outstrip its capacity, even within its primary focus on students and their families. UC faculty and staff also need to know that UC will have our back if ICE comes for us, especially where based on work-related conduct like research, writing, or teaching on disfavored topics.
• Directly challenging Trump Administration immigration policies. Some higher education leaders have publicly condemned the use of immigration law to attack colleges and universities. Eighty-six colleges and universities joined by name in supporting the AAUP v. Rubio suit against politically-targeted immigration actions against students and faculty, but the UC and its campuses shamefully were not among them. UC’s and UCLA’s statements of support for noncitizen community members have been strikingly vague and weak. They fail to criticize directly the Trump crackdowns to which they obliquely respond, let alone to commit to challenging them legally or to strengthening existing UC or UCLA immigrant-protective policies. Neither the UCLA administration nor Senate have addressed the nascent Big Ten mutual academic defense compact.
• Reinforcing protections for nonpublic areas. Rather than relying entirely on faculty and staff initiative to turn away ICE efforts to enter nonpublic spaces, UC could post notices designating classrooms and other locations as nonpublic spaces to which ICE access is prohibited absent presentation of a judicial warrant to campus leadership. Such notice posting was widespread for COVID-related precautions.
• Narrowing legal obligations to provide ICE access. In some cases, the presentation of even a judicial warrant or subpoena does not require immediate compliance. Instead, there may be opportunities to challenge their validity before complying. A UC sanctuary policy could include pursing all available good faith challenges to the validity of otherwise binding warrants or subpoenas.
• Disclosing ICE enforcement efforts. When the UC is presented with an immigration-related subpoena or warrant pertaining to a community member, it could disclose that to the affected individual to help them assess their own legal options. A recent ACLU letter discusses this in more detail, including how purported prohibitions on disclosure are often unenforceable. As noted above, AB 450 requires disclosure of certain ICE enforcement actions, and some sample collective bargaining language is here.
• Limiting academic and employment consequences of immigration enforcement. The UC could support community members facing immigration enforcement by maximizing their ability to stay connected to their education and workplace. This includes providing opportunities to continue coursework or job duties remotely.
• Implementing the “Opportunity for All” proposal to end employment discrimination against undocumented students without DACA. Federal immigration law excludes undocumented workers from private sector employment, but prominent immigration and constitutional law scholars, including at UCLA, have shown that this law does not apply to state employers like the UC. Based on this, the UC Regents initially endorsed the Opportunity for All (O4A) campaign to end UC employment discrimination against undocumented students, but they later reneged on that commitment. Like sanctuary, O4A pursues maximum protection and inclusion for immigrants and other noncitizens.

Additional suggestions can be found in this overview from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Administration Threats Against Sanctuary Institutions

The Trump Administration repeatedly has threatened a variety of actions against state and local governments with sanctuary policies, as well as against the officials who implement them. These threats, however, generally rely on misstatements of current law. One line of attack relies on a criminal statute that forbids “harboring” someone illegally present in the U.S. “Harboring,” however, does not apply merely to the sanctuary practice of withholding voluntary cooperation with law enforcement. Nor does it apply to including undocumented people in generally available services like housing. Generally speaking, harboring requires active, intentional interference with immigration enforcement.  Because the harboring prohibition pertains only to people present in violation of law, it does not reach legal permanent residents or visa holders against whom the government has merely initiated deportation proceedings without yet obtaining a court order of removal. The Administration’s other main line of attack is to threaten cutoffs of unrelated federal funding to entities with sanctuary policies, reprising a tactic from the first Trump administration. Such cutoffs, however, generally violate laws governing federal funding and, in some cases, constitutional limits on federal power, as a federal court recently reaffirmed.

Resources

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Open Letter to College and University General Counsels on: 1) 8 U.S.C. § 1324 Harboring Liability, and 2) ICE Administrative Subpoenas (April 2025).

ACLU, ACLU Letter and Memo on the Trump Administration’s Legally Baseless Threats Against State and Local Officials (January 2025).

American Council on Education, Immigration-Related Campus Concerns (2025).

American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Protecting Our Students and Higher Ed Employees (2025).

Arulanantham, Ahilan (UCLA Law), “What Just Happened: Sanctuary Policies and the DOJ Memo’s Empty Threat of Criminal Liability,” Just Security (January 2025).

Bonta, Rob (California Attorney General), Promoting a Safe and Secure Campus for All: Guidance and Model Policies to Assist California’s Colleges and Universities in Responding to Immigration Issues (December 2024).