Uncertain Sanctuary: The Terrifying Consequences of Administrative Silence

Editor’s Note: This article is published using exclusively the name of a club, Swatties for Immigrant Rights, as the author. Under normal circumstances, The Phoenix does not allow individuals or groups to submit articles anonymously without also including the name of at least one member. However, we have decided to make an exception to this policy due to concerns about the safety of individual members of Swatties for Immigrant Rights. We are a community newspaper and take our responsibility to protect community members seriously.

In the face of escalating federal attacks on non-citizens, academic freedom, and diversity in higher education, Swarthmore College’s response has been marked by unsettling ambiguity. 

On Feb. 4, 2025, a coalition of 28 student organizations sent emails to the president’s office demanding action from President Val Smith. Their plea was clear: Swarthmore must publicly oppose Trump’s attacks on undocumented students, especially those being targeted for pro-Palestinian speech, and back their words with material support. Legal fees for immigration processes such as legal appeals, work permit renewals, and immigration proceedings can cost thousands of dollars, an often insurmountable financial burden for students already fighting systemic barriers. 

The administration was silent in the face of these demands.

Chief of Staff and Secretary of the College Erin Brownlee Dell responded on behalf of President Smith over a month later on March 20, 2025. Referencing Smith’s Feb. 12th statement on federal policies, Dell claims that the college has been doing all that it can by distributing Know Your Rights cards and offering other informational resources. Requests for financial support beyond what is already offered by the International Student Program have been forwarded to Director of International Student Programs Jennifer Marks-Gold and are still pending.

Then, on April 2, 2025, President Smith released a public message to the community affirming the college’s commitment to protecting vulnerable communities. President Smith’s statement demonstrates a concerning preoccupation with safeguarding Swarthmore’s financial interests, particularly its endowment, over the safety of her students. Over half the statement is dedicated to explaining the college’s financial concerns while the threat of immigration officials is mentioned only once. There is no direct discussion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), deportation, or detainment. Instead, she promises only to “hold paramount the safety and well-being of our students, faculty, and staff members,” with no action steps outlining how. 

Meanwhile, the college is actively lobbying through organizations like the American Council on Education and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to prevent an increase in endowment taxes. This comes as an insult following months of indifferent silence to the urgent needs of non-citizen students.

As of June 30, 2024, the endowment is valued at over $2.7 billion, of which Swarthmore spent $118 million during the 2023-2024 school year. This amounts to about 4.37% of the total endowment, well within the Investment Office’s target range of 3.5%-5% total endowment spending per year. Though it is unclear from which revenue sources the endowment tax is paid, President Smith has made clear that the endowment tax stands at $2 million per year, or about 0.067% of the total endowment. 

Students requiring comprehensive immigration legal services can be billed anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000, sometimes more depending on the service. Covering the full cost of the more expensive services for 100 students would total around $1 million, amounting to about 0.037% of the current endowment or 1.26% of the $79.2 million the school budgeted from net student revenue. Rather than offering transparency as to why these services cannot be funded, the administration is individualizing this issue. Swarthmore is forcing students to take responsibility for their own safety if and when immigration officers come to campus, offering no preventative safeguards or contingency plans, just a promise to “comply with the law and do so without preemptively adhering to changes in federal policy that undermine our mission.”

A private meeting between administrators and concerned faculty about the possibility of extending material support to non-citizen students only intensified already heightened feelings of fear and anxiety. Attendees reported that while there was discussion of federal policy navigation, there was no clear commitment to protecting non-citizen students.

“We’re tired of it being the students fighting for their own rights,” says one student. “How is it possible for an institution […] like Swarthmore to be hesitant for its administration to at least address the specific concerns we have? We live in fear every day, anxious of what tomorrow brings, and the best we get is knowing the endowment will be safe. What about our safety? What about our well-being? We don’t seem to be the priority for Swarthmore. At least, not anymore.” 

This inaction persists as the world bears witness to the Department of Homeland Security’s unlawful targeting of Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri, Rasha Alawieh, and Rumeysa Ozturk, among others. Closer to home, a student visa was revoked at Temple University, a mere twenty miles from our campus. Reports of ICE raids in nearby Upper Darby and Philadelphia underscore the immediacy of these threats. And still, Swarthmore’s administration refuses to take concrete steps to protect its own.

Recently, Pomona College committed to “fully cooperat[ing]” with congressional inquiries about disciplinary records of anti-Zionist “incidents” on their campus. Though the college has pledged that they “will not expose student identities unless obligations to the law stipulate otherwise”, the presence of these threats poses a real danger to Pomona’s non-citizen student population and their families for participating in pro-Palestinian activism. For students on Swarthmore’s campus who have been speaking out about colonial violence in Gaza and the West Bank, this poses an entirely new threat to their immediate safety as well as their freedom of expression and inquiry. Swarthmore has already demonstrated its willingness to suspend students who protest injustice, showing little regard for the consequences of displacement and houselessness. With no clear understanding of how the administration plans to cooperate with federal officers or the kinds of repercussions students could face for simply expressing anti-genocidal sentiment, students can only fear for the worst. 

“Swarthmore has ignored our pleas to protect us, as it has refused to acknowledge scholasticide over the past two years. The two are connected and cannot be separated,” another student adds. “Non-citizen students should not be worrying about being detained and shipped off to Louisiana because Valerie Smith and the board didn’t grow a spine to protect us. Students in Gaza should not be going to sleep uncertain if they wake up tomorrow because of the bombs that we fund.”

In 2016, President Smith released a joint statement with Thomas E. Spock, then chair of the Board of Managers, in response to the campus community’s concerns with student safety following Trump’s 2016 inauguration. They wholeheartedly pledged to “do everything within its power to promote the safety of any member of our community who may face heightened threat.” Now, with an immediate threat right outside its doors, the college’s preoccupation with endowment taxes raises a critical question: What does “sanctuary” mean during this Trump presidency? And does it take precedence over Swarthmore’s financial interests?  

“It’s been distressing to hear a great deal about the lobbying and coalition-building that Swarthmore has been doing to protect its endowment earnings from a potential tax increase but to hear very little about similarly proactive efforts to protect non-citizen students, staff, and faculty from the detainments and deportations that are taking place at this very moment,” says an anonymous faculty member. 

Trust in the institution erodes as vulnerable communities realize the college’s promises bear no weight. Swarthmore’s refusal to act despite its public commitments to sanctuary and solidarity sends a clear message: when pressed to choose between protecting its most vulnerable members and preserving its own financial interests, the administration will hesitate, deflect, or simply look away. 

This pattern of neglect is not just bureaucratic inertia, it is a betrayal. Every unanswered email, every vague statement, every ineffectual meeting reinforces the reality that Swarthmore’s ideals crumble under pressure. Without urgent, material action — legal aid, emergency funds, or even a public condemnation of I.C.E.’s crackdowns — the college’s rhetoric rings hollow. 

What you can do:

1. Check in with your friends: Institutional protections are failing — check in with vulnerable friends, offer solidarity, and help them navigate safety plans.
2. Stay informed: Attend teach-ins and information sessions both on and off campus. Follow trusted news sources to track ICE activity and research ways to support at-risk peers.
3. Stay vigilant: Take note of unmarked vehicles, uniformed immigration officers, and suspicious plainclothes officers. 
4. Get ICE watch trained: Know your rights and learn how to safely and responsibly interact with immigration officers. There will be an ICE watch training session at 8 p.m. on April 22, in Kohlberg 228. Additional training will be announced.
5. Participate in defense initiatives on campus: Leave your personal email address with Swarthmore’s student-led community defense initiative to learn how you can help organize against ICE threats on our campus. 

Correction (made on April 18, 2025): A previous version of this article stated that Pomona College had volunteered student disciplinary records to Congress, which is not the case.