Sanctuary Campus NOW.

Written by MIT YDSA

Those of us whose hearts burn for the cause of bread and roses – for a world liberated from scarcity, violence, and empire – see a sick society. We see those with the wrong papers or skin color persecuted by an ICE terror state. We see the pollutive fumes of fossil capital destroying life on earth for short-term profit. We see the horrors of a 21st century colonial regime in occupied Palestine. We see rising homelessness, food insecurity, debt, rent, and persistent poverty. Automation, now directed toward white-collar workers, is eroding the value of our degrees. Our economic system, capitalism, moves closer to crowning an oligarch the world’s first trillionaire even as it viciously exploits a global working class left behind in rising tides of inequality.

In the United States, Republican politicians enjoy a trifecta – in the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court – and have used it to give tax breaks to the wealthy and cut life supports for the poor. They have attempted to defund science, erode public health protections, shred civil, reproductive, and, soon, voting rights, and destabilize and invade other countries, such as Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, and Iran. An ICE gestapo army, reminiscent of slave catcher militias, is terrorizing immigrants and citizens. ICE has tortured people in detention camps, and killed and disappeared those who dissent such as Keith Porter, Renée Good, Leqaa Kordia, and Alex Pretti. Meanwhile, the corrupt establishment of the Democratic Party – with its empty promises and opportunism, its betrayal of voters, its compromises to special interests over the majority of working people — has only mounted an insipid and half-hearted opposition to this fascism.

As socialists, we believe in a world beyond these conditions — a world without class antagonism, exploitation, and social domination. We believe in the centrality of class struggle and the necessity of a politics oriented towards complete emancipation. We also believe in a profoundly democratic society, one in which democracy doesn’t end at the ballot box but is extended to every facet of our daily lives: the university, the tenement, and, most urgently, the workplace. A better world will not be handed to us on a silver platter by the ruling capitalist class; they will fight tooth and nail to prevent such a world from existing, and it is our responsibility as socialists to wrest power from them to build this world ourselves.

MIT, as one of the vital nodes of the U.S. military industrial complex, is a crucial site of struggle. Amidst a university administration that prioritizes MIT’s profitability over protecting its own students and workers, it is only through organized movement that we can prevent MIT from capitulating to the rabid demands of a Trump administration hellbent on attacking immigrants and racialized minorities. As such, we recognize that our power must come not from our position as students, but as current and future members of the working class. To protect our community from ICE, we must integrate ourselves with the workers’ movement and form principled relationships with organized labor on campus, academic and non-academic unions alike.

Under these conditions, a Sanctuary Campus is crucial. The border regime and its extension into an apartheid and mass surveillance system within the U.S. heartland denies immigrants the basic rights of others–rights to privacy, due process, free speech, and nondiscrimination. It is in this context that we as students at MIT in the new chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America call on MIT to adopt public commitments to stand behind all its community members – not just students – but employees and contractors. Specifically we call on MIT to:

  1. Publicly declare itself to be a sanctuary campus, by refusing to assist, coordinate, or partner with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including participation in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) program and cooperation with ICE detainer requests or the transfer of detainees from MIT police to DHS custody.

  2. Publicly end MIT Lincoln Labs research for the DHS Security Science and Technology Directorate to develop drone-mounted surveillance to “see” through walls.

  3. Publicly refuse to collaborate with federal agencies in any effort to identify, surveil, detain, or deport community members (e.g. Trump administration’s March request for universities to name student protesters).

  4. Publicly refuse to release information on immigration status or place of residence of Community Members to any government agency, except as required by a court-ordered subpoena. This includes not complying with Section 3 of the expanded Executive Order 13899.

  5. Publicly commit to provide notice within one calendar day to any community member of a subpoena or any investigation from a governmental agency seeking information about the community member.

  6. Designate a fund to cover legal advice, representation, and other expenses related to immigration services, including legal defense against immigration enforcement authorities, needed by all community members, including non-academic staff and contractors employed by MIT.

  7. Mandate training for all employees, including but not limited to GRAs, PIs, and dormitory security on protocol for interactions with federal agents on campus and the difference between administrative and judicial warrants.

  8. Ensure all community members can continue education or work regardless of changes in immigration status or apprehension by immigration enforcement. MIT must support a student or worker’s request for leave/temporary withdrawal due to changing immigration status.

  9. Make reasonable efforts to reemploy/reenroll these community members as soon as possible once their physical location and immigration status permits them to work, or support their search for education/employment elsewhere.

  10. MIT will provide international students and staff protections in their contracts as outlined by the bargaining priorities of the GSU and 32 BJ in their 2026 contract campaign, including the following non-citizen worker protections:

  • Flexibility in appointments and remote work when experiencing immigration issues
  • Only releasing immigration-related information when required by law, with mandatory advance notice
  • Protections from activity of federal agents, such as DHS, ICE, and FBI, on campus
  • Equitable opportunities to take on internships, e.g. improved CPT/OPT policies
  • Improved response times from ISO and departments for immigration-related paperwork
  • Increased financial support for visa renewals, unexpected legal fees related to immigration, and DACA students”
  • Legal fund for all MIT workers

We acknowledge that a Sanctuary Campus at MIT is not enough. ICE must be abolished, along with the structural forces that coerce people to migrate. The only way we can ultimately protect ourselves from ICE terror is to organize ourselves as a class. This includes the necessary work to build up a democratic socialist party that organizes for both our immediate self-defense and the long-term political struggle to abolish ICE and transform society such that re-constituting ICE as an organ of state terror is impossible.

To this end, the YDSA chapter commits itself to advancing the project of a Sanctuary Campus together with the existing labor organizations on campus and advancing the cause of socialist, feminist, and anti-colonial and anti-fascist movements across the world. We call on MIT students to join us in this struggle, guided by an anti-fascist ethos that sees our liberation tied to the emancipation of the working classes and all living things.