College was supposed to be a refuge for X. After immigrating to the United States from Zambia as a 9-year-old in 2012, she moved in with her father in North Texas. There, she endured years of neglect.
Her father focused his time and money on his girlfriend. X, who asked the Chronicle for anonymity due to her undocumented immigration status, was often hungry, as her father would leave her home alone for extended periods. When bills went unpaid, she lived without water and power. She didn’t have clothes for the cold weather.
Her older siblings, who had both attended college, encouraged her to think about going to college. It could be a pathway to a better, safer life.
X took the advice. She applied for a scholarship through TheDream.US, an organization that provides scholarships for undocumented students. She could hardly believe her eyes when the acceptance email came through. “I screenshotted it. I sent it to my sister,” X said. She asked her sister to read the acceptance to her. “I was so shocked I forgot how to read.”
She began her studies at a university in San Antonio in August 2020. She studied computer science, building up a sought-after skill set in the field which she turned into a freelance business in 2023.
Some undocumented students are wary to share details of their immigration status, but X was open with her classmates about her immigration status. “It’s a very big part of my journey,” she said. “I always say, ‘If I wasn’t undocumented, who would I be?’” That, combined with her success in building a business, made her a role model for undocumented students on campus, who often turned to her for advice. It also nudged her toward pursuing an MBA at the same university.
But the peace she found at college washed away last November. She was scared when Donald Trump won the election, and that fear has only grown. As fellow classmates sent a deluge of messages looking for advice, she tried to be transparent, letting them know that she too was scared. “I didn’t want my fear to be hidden,” she said.
The feeling of fear described by X is one that pervaded college campuses across the state this past semester. Trump put immigrants and universities in his crosshairs. He quickly rescinded previous guidance from the Biden administration that had barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from making arrests on school campuses. Shortly thereafter, the administration made a spectacle of arresting international students, like Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, who both had voiced support for Palestine.
Texas college students faced uniquely challenging circumstances. The state’s leadership has prioritized immigration enforcement and forcefully quashed large-scale pro-Palestine protests seen on the state’s college campuses last spring. It also passed legislation that barred diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at universities, which meant that some of the support infrastructure for undocumented students, like the Monarch Program at the University of Texas at Austin, went away.
Despite the risks, a small but vocal group of student protesters in the state fought back, demanding that the leadership at their universities take action to protect international and undocumented students.
Fighting the Fight
For Arshia Papari, a government major and spokesperson for Students for a Democratic Society, that means a broad commitment to keeping ICE off campus as much as possible. He added that SDS would like to see the university utilize its alert system to inform the community when ICE will be near or on campus. But some of the asks are smaller, like issuing a statement that expresses support for all students, regardless of their immigration status. He said that the group has tried to engage with UT President Jim Davis nine times, including two in-person interactions at events attended by Davis, but they have not received a response.
As a result, SDS has held protests. While the protests have been smaller than the pro-Palestine mass demonstrations in the spring of 2024, Papari said the energy at the protests has been powerful. “I think the college campuses have always been the front line for social change,” he added.
Laysha Renee Gonzalez, a recent UT Austin graduate who majored in race, indigeneity and migration, has been a consistent presence at the protests this year. She grew up in Laredo with immigrant parents. “I believe that, as children of immigrants, we’re physical representations of what the American dream is,” she said. She has also taken her activism beyond the campus grounds, testifying in May 2024 about the negative impact of Senate Bill 17, the law barring DEI programs at state universities.
Activists on other campuses across the state have staged protests this semester too. Noor S., a Texas A&M student who asked to not use her last name because she has participated in pro-Palestine protests, said the protests at that university are about keeping ICE off campus. Elena Meza, a second-year student at the University of North Texas, helped organize a march against ICE deportations.
“If nobody’s gonna fight the fight, then I have to,” Meza said. “I feel like that’s the sense that a lot of people are having now. Going out to these protests and wanting to change things and wanting to fight, especially on college campuses.” She estimated that the march drew 500 people.
Tony, who graduated from a university in Houston in December, said he doesn’t feel safe driving to see his friends on campus due to his undocumented status (the same reason he asked the Chronicle not to use his full name). Nonetheless, he felt compelled to attend a protest in Houston in February with his fraternity brothers.
Easy Targets
The activists are fighting for people like Tim, who asked that the Chronicle not use his full name due to concerns for his visa. Tim, an international graduate student at UT-Austin from Taiwan, participated in pro-Palestine protests in the fall of 2024. At first when Trump was elected, he wasn’t worrying much about how it would directly impact him, but that changed when he saw how Trump seemed to favor Russia over Ukraine in peace negotiations – a particularly concerning issue for Taiwanese people who worry about China invading their country.
Then he began to hear rumors of ICE targeting students on college campuses. “In Taiwan, we feel very safe on campus because the police couldn’t get into Taiwan’s universities,” he said. While he was only planning to study at the university for one year as part of a foreign exchange program, he began to take precautions, like wearing a mask to protests. The Trump administration’s approach to revoking visas seemed opaque to him. If he has the opportunity to study abroad again in the future, he said he will likely look into doing so in countries other than the U.S.
Julie Sparks, an Austin-based immigration attorney, said that social media poses a potential risk for students. “The administration has been very clear that in different contexts they’re going to start, more so than in the past, combing through social media accounts,” she said. She says whether to post or not, “That’s a very personal decision. But if you’re going to do it, know the risks that anything on your social media could be used against you.”
She said she has had sleepless nights since Trump was elected and that the administration’s crackdown on immigration has been worse than she feared. “Right now, we’re witnessing the hunting down of immigrants,” she said.
There have always been risks for undocumented students. One student who graduated from a university in San Antonio in 2024 said she only told a handful of people about her undocumented status: three classmates, and the university staff who oversaw her funding. But under the new administration, the risk has ratcheted up.
International and undocumented students face different sets of risks, Sparks said. For international students in the country on a visa, the government has the burden to prove that a person should be deported, whereas people with undocumented status face the burden to prove that they are not removable.
However, international students must go through the Department of Homeland Security to receive their visa, meaning they are being closely tracked by the government. It makes them “an easy target for political oppression,” Sparks said.
Living Like a CIA Operative
For Alex, the strength of community is an unheralded aspect of resistance to the Trump administration. When she wanted to go on a dream camping trip to Big Bend, but decided against it due to the border checkpoints within Texas that she would have to pass through, her friends were there to hold her as she cried.
Alex, who asked the Chronicle for anonymity due to her undocumented immigration status, was born in Mexico but spent much of her life moving around the United States. Her dad is a welder who worked in the oil industries of Montana, Illinois, and Midland, Texas.
She said she didn’t spend much time thinking about her undocumented status until 2016 when Trump was first elected. She was 12 years old, and the adults around her kept referring to the president as “evil.” Then, she tried to apply for DACA in 2017, something her brother had been able to do roughly three years earlier. She learned that the Trump administration had ended the program. Her dreams of getting a driver’s license vanished.
“It just really made me realize how being undocumented and being a citizen is such a socialized and racialized thing,” she said. “It’s just made up.”
She wanted to go to college and began to apply for programs that might provide her with a scholarship. She looked into the Texas Application for State Financial Aid, a state program that undocumented Texas students are eligible for. By her junior year, she hadn’t managed to line anything up. Her grades and school attendance were slipping as a result of instability in her family stemming from her dad’s struggles with substance abuse. Then a cousin informed her of a program at Rice University where applicants whose families earned under a certain threshold could get a full scholarship. She glanced at the list of majors on the university website and decided she could find something worthwhile to study there.
Alex got into Rice. Her initial impression was that the students were entitled, but she gradually began to fit in. She sought out fellow undocumented students – the only people who could truly understand her situation. She joined a campus organization for undocumented students. “Every time we did meet, it was just nice to complain with someone,” she said. Like most students, they kept getting emails about studying abroad or internship opportunities. As undocumented students, those seemingly typical college experiences were out of reach.
When Trump was elected for the second time in November, she began to worry. She worried someone in her family’s workplace could get raided, and they could get deported without due process. And she worried that DACA was now further out of reach, with her graduation approaching in the spring. The campus organization for undocumented students began to take precautions, moving conversations to WhatsApp for its encrypted messaging capabilities, moving a shared drive to a double-encrypted platform, and even discussing putting their phones in bags that cancel out cell signal. It all felt crazy. “I’m not a fucking CIA operative,” she said. “I’m just a student.”
Nevertheless, she tries to put on a brave face.
“I can’t catastrophize, because I feel like, in a way, that’s what the administration wants,” she said. “They want people to feel like they have no choice but to just live in despair. I refuse to live like that, but it’s scary, and it feels like it’s only getting worse.”
This article appears in June 13 • 2025.