In April, a Judiciary Committee passed legislation in the North Carolina Senate that would place penalties such holding state funds, on cities and counties that do not follow more strict laws against undocumented immigrants.

If it becomes law, this legislation, Senate Bill 145, will place restrictions on acceptable forms of identification, as well as ban schools in the UNC System from adopting any “sanctuary” policy that would protect undocumented immigrants in the campus community and forces them to disclose immigration status of students or face losing funding.

El Pueblo is a Raleigh-based nonprofit organization that focuses on advocacy, leadership development, collaborations and cultural exchange in the Latino community. They are in opposition to the bill and see no positive outcome in its passing.

William Saenz, communications coordinator at El Pueblo, spoke about SB 145 and how it could negatively affect UNC campuses.

“The bill has been proposed by several state senators who, for years now, have been substantially anti-immigrant, and have been pushing in pretty much every single year a series of hateful anti- immigrant bills that really do nothing to progress our state and only continues to marginalize our communities,” Saenz said.

SB 145 is sponsored by Sen. Norman Sanderson of District 2, and co-sponsored by Sen. Andrew Brock of District 34, Sen. Bill Cook of District 1, Sen. David Curtis of District 44, Sen. Chuck Edwards of District 48, Sen. Ralph Hise of District 47, Sen. Joyce Krawiec of District 31, Sen. Louis Pate of District 7, Sen. Ronald Rabin of District 12, and Sen. Jerry Tillman of District 29, all Republicans.

In a press release from the office of Sanderson relating to SB 145, titled “Bill Filed to Create Penalties for Local Governments that Willingly Violate the Law, Harbor Illegal Aliens,” the Senator expressed his optimism toward what the bill can achieve.

“While we all welcome immigrants who come to our state legally, local politicians, law enforcement and public university officials are not above following immigration laws, and hopefully these changes will provide the incentive needed to make them do the right thing,” Sanderson said in the release.

Also in April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of North Carolina spoke out against SB 145. Sarah Gillooly, policy director for the ACLU of North Carolina, condemned the Senate bill in a statement, and said it would potentially violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

“These extreme proposals would trample on the rights and wellbeing of all community members, spread fear and confusion, waste countless government resources, and do nothing to make North Carolina safer,” Gillooly said in the statment.

According to the bill text, HB 145 aims “to create additional incentives for local governments to comply with state laws related to immigration, to prohibit UNC constituent institutions from becoming sanctuary universities, and to direct the Department of Public Safety to enter into a memorandum of agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.”

El Pueblo is concerned with many aspects of SB 145 such as its potential violation of federal law, endangerment to immigrant communities and the bill’s taking away from the educational experience of students.

“With SB 145, it’s been the biggest concern for us because it’s kind of the combination of all the things that we’ve been concerned with in the past couple of years,” Saenz said. “It deputizes state troopers into becoming immigration enforcement officers. Immigration is a specifically federal issue. It’s not a local, municipal or even state-wide issue, and it was deemed unconstitutional for local municipalities to be forced into enforcing federal laws … It also causes a lot of fear and distress within the Latinx community.”

According to Saenz, the effects of SB 145 becoming law and forcing school administrations to disclose information related to immigration status can lead to students being detained and deported.

“If it does manage to become law, which is up in the air right now, that would basically mean that all the students in North Carolina would then be subject to, if the university is requested to disclose the student’s information, that then makes them vulnerable to becoming not only questioned by authorities but also possibly detained, and depending on their documented status, being separated from their families and deported,” Saenz said.

Volunteers at El Pueblo aim to educate members of immigrant communities and students who could be affected by immigration related bills and encourage them to get involved.

“We feel like schools should obviously be a safe place for people to pursue their careers and pursue their interests,” Saenz said. “To put that kind of fear on them, particularly when their documented status is already in question and they’re possibly having to pay outrageous out-of-state tuition and costs because they’re not documented residents, there’s already a lot of issues that they have to deal with. The fact that they now have to worry about the idea that they’re not safe at their own universities, that’s very troubling for us.”