On Tuesday, Feb. 27, the University hosted a Q&A in Ring Family Performing Arts Hall with Mauricio Noroña, Director of the Immigration Rights Advocacy Clinic and Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Touro University.

Some student organizers shared their personal connection to the immigration debate.

“I personally got involved because this is an issue that’s very common among Latin American students,” LASO member and organizer Andrea Herrera ’27 said. “This is an issue that really hits home for me—and pretty much hits home for any child of immigrants.”

Noroña began by giving a presentation titled “The Growing Assault on Immigration Rights in Trump II and the Power of Resistance.” He analyzed the direction of the administration’s immigration policy and examined recent developments in immigration enforcement.

“It has been helpful for me to think of what the Trump administration wants to do as not just a mass deportation agenda, which fits neatly on a poster, but rather the radical expansion of executive power that’s designed to reshape the country in terms of racial composition,” Noroña said. 

After reviewing Trump’s policies, Noroña discussed how the new administration has narrowed legal pathways to immigration.

“It is very clear that this administration is not concerned at all about the legality of lawful pathways or whether people are following the proper order, because it has already taken several steps to systemically repress lawful immigration pathways altogether,” Noroña said. “We’ve seen that there’s a full asylum ban, which basically says that anybody who comes in at the border today doesn’t get to apply for asylum. We’ve seen that with the revocation of temporary protected status, which is this type of aid that applies on a country-specific basis. It started with Venezuelans, hundreds of thousands of people who had lawful status and who will not have it in a very short time if the administration gets to do the revocation in the way that it intends.”

Noroña noted the danger of the Trump administration’s consistent portrayal of mass immigration from Latin America as an invasion and how policies predicated on this narrative could affect American citizens. 

“Invasion as a narrative justifies the militarization of immigration enforcement,” Noroña said. “And we have already seen some of that…in terms of the usage of military planes to deport individuals, and we’ve seen images of that posted on official social media, but it goes really beyond that. It has serious consequences for everyone else because there is no power that starts using and expanding military infrastructure that doesn’t get to use it on everybody else at some point.”

Noroña then expanded on detention and deportation, especially concerning countries with which the United States has no diplomatic relations. He talked about extreme measures like deportation to Guantánamo Bay and suspension of most refugee assistance programs.

After explaining the present legal landscape, Noroña mentioned some early advocacy successes, such as the temporary injunction of major policy initiatives like birthright citizenship revocation. He also highlighted the importance of community legal education in opposing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, such as through what is known as “red cards” containing tips and information about legal resources—which were also distributed at the Feb. 27 event.

“There’s some early success around litigation and advocacy again, but that alone is not going to prevent this,” Noroña said. “We’ve seen a ton of community legal education. You see the red cards here? The last I read was that about nine million of these cards have been distributed since the election, and we know that’s working because ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], which originally was posting daily numbers of arrests, has stopped doing that, because they realize that they’re really not making a dent in numbers of arrests and deportations.”

The panelists then shared information about the immigration attorneys that the University works with. They noted that the University also provides pro bono support for students, including phone calls, in-person meetings, and legal support if a student is detained or questioned.

The event ended with Noroña answering attendees’ questions ranging from President Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric on social media to accessibility to legal counsel in detention.

Herrera emphasized the importance of taking action to protect immigrant rights as policies change under the Trump administration.

“I feel like this is a time in which, if you have the privilege to help out and speak, you need to get involved, and you need to help out—and this is my way of getting involved,” Herrera said. “This is definitely not the end. This is just the beginning. We’re going to keep working on different events to help the community and continue to provide support for them.”

Raiza Goel can be reached at rgoel@wesleyan.edu. 

Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.