"Why Not Everybody Rally?"

COLBY

There’s a part of this story we haven’t really dealt with yet. An added layer of nuance and context. 

It has to do with President Trump. 

His signature campaign promise — the thing he vowed to do, over and over again — was Mass Deportations. 

He would explain his reasoning for Mass Deportations using White Supremacist language. Like at this rally, in 2023.

TRUMP

You know when they let, I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country, when they do that — we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done, they've poisoned — mental institutions, and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world, they’re coming into our country from Africa. From Asia. From all over the world. They’re pouring in. No one is even looking at them. They just come in.

COLBY

And he would justify Mass Deportations with quite literally dehumanizing language. This is him in April, 2024.

TRUMP

The democrats say: Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans. I said: No, they’re not humans. They’re not humans. They’re animals. Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said: Please don’t use the word ‘Animals’ when you’re talking about these people. I said: I’ll use the word animal. Because that’s what they are. 

COLBY

This anti-immigrant rhetoric was a big part of the President’s stump speech. He fired up his supporters with it all the time. But it also flared into racist, and factually incorrect comments during really public moments. 

Like when he said this, on national television, just two months before the election.

TRUMP

What they have done to our country, by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country — and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it. Because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in — they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. 

COLBY

Again, that’s a baseless, and racist conspiracy theory. But it didn’t stop at just rhetoric. 

On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order called, in all caps, “Protecting The American People Against Invasion.” Ordering his government to start trying to remove more and more immigrants.

And it did.

The Department of Homeland Security changed its rules about whether it could go into churches and schools. Federal authorities started trying to deport people faster. And tried harder to work with local law enforcement to figure out who they could arrest and deport. 

You could read these actions as little technical adjustments. A memo here, a directive there. But, together, they represented a recalibration of how the federal government understood migration. 

But the numbers really tell the story. Within a year, the immigration detention population quadrupled. By the end of 2025 street arrests per week had quadrupled as well, compared to late 2024.

And mostly not of convicted criminals. Throughout 2025, the number of people arrested by ICE, but without any criminal conviction at all, went up over 8 times.

And deportations rose too. And by the end of Trump’s first year, ICE was deporting 5 times as many people each week, compared to late 2024.

All these numbers are from ICE’s own statistics, obtained and published by the Deportation Data project. It’s a fantastic resource. And you can see the graphs on any of those statistics by clicking on the links in our transcript on our website.

Now, one of the pieces of this narrative that is so important, but that we haven’t really focused on yet, is the fact that Fordham is a professedly Jesuit school. And that means it comes from a tradition whose beliefs might just butt up against these immigration policies.

What’s more is the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, is the big agency carrying out this Mass Deportation agenda.

And DHS is the agency also administering the SEVIS terminations.

So, in a way, in the Spring of 2025, the federal government was enacting a Mass Deportations agenda, and also impacting Fordham international students.

Which means that Fordham’s Jesuit identity and the beliefs associated with it, those were actively challenged. It wasn’t theoretical. It was happening.

Today, we’re going to take a deep dive into one specific belief. We’re taking a break from the events of the Spring 2025 semester, and instead taking you through the context, nuance and history of Fundamental Human Dignity.

This discussion adds a new layer to this series. 

It’s not just: What Did Fordham Do? 

Now, it’s: What Should Fordham Have Done? 

And, because these policies are still playing out, it’s also: What Should Fordham Do Next?

Our show today is divided into three Acts:

Act I: A Priest, an Imam and a Rabbi walk into a podcast, and give us their thoughts on human dignity.

Act II: How other people of faith dealt with a deportation-frenzied government in the past.

And Act III: A reconstructed dialogue of discernment about providing sanctuary in our current moment.

All that, coming up, in just a minute.

You’re listening to REVOKED? 

I’m your host Colby McCaskill. 

This is Chapter 4: “Why Not Everybody Rally?”

COLBY

Act I.

We wanted to know what Fordham’s Abrahamic Faith leaders think about human dignity. Is it universal? 

Here’s what Father John Cecero, a Jesuit, and Catholic leader at Fordham, had to say.

JOHN

Human dignity is respect for being created in the image and likeness of God. That’s from a Catholic theological perspective, obviously. And that as such, every human being deserves the kind of respect for his or her own person, for his or her own right to exist, to be treated with compassion, kindness, understanding, patience.

COLBY

Within Judaism, Fordham’s campus Rabbi, Katja Vehlow, points to a recurring ethical command: care for the sojourner, because you were once a sojourner yourselves. Often that word means something akin to immigrant. Someone who is not from here, but is here now.

KATJA

So, in the Hebrew Bible, it’s full of sentences, such as: Take care of the widow, and the orphan, and the stranger. Because you were strangers in Egypt. The idea of reading texts, such as the Exodus, and others, as texts that remind us that it’s written into our, lets say, mythical story, into our own sacred story, that we were strangers. In the bible, it’s very clear that people left because of famine. And they left because they had to. They didn’t go to Egypt because, I don’t know, they wanted to see the pyramids. They moved because there was no choice, and then later left again. And certainly, there are lots of stories of injustice that people experienced. There are also many other stories in the bible. But these are stories that, I think, really speak to me.

COLBY

And according to the Director of Muslim Life at Fordham, this kind of respect for all humanity is divinely required.

AMMAR

وَلَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ

Surah Al-Isra (17:70)

COLBY

That is

AMMAR

Imam Ammar Abdul Rahman

COLBY

He’s the campus Imam. The in-house spiritual leader for Muslims at Fordham University. And he was just quoting a part of the quran that says —

AMMAR

"That Indeed we have honored the children of Adam." And this is, you know, a flat, straight statement that does not require any form of interpretation or different understanding. It implies something that is really straight forward — that the children of Adam have been honored by Allah.

...

Allah did not say —

...

— we have honored the Muslims, or we have honored the Christians, or we have honored the Jews, or we have honored the Blacks or the whites or the Asian. No. He said:

بَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ 

So the entire humanity is something that is honored in the sight of God. In the sight of Allah.

COLBY

Imam Rahman explained that, 

AMMAR

It would be the highest, or the utmost level of disobedience and disrespect to God to dishonor something that he has honored.

COLBY

When Fordham’s faith leaders talk about the idea of Fundamental Human Dignity, this is what they’re talking about. That every person has inherent worth. That worth is afforded to everyone, regardless of citizenship or race or creed or religion. Before they earn it. Before they prove it, before the law even recognizes it. 

Let me make this as plain as I can. 

When you’re on a train in New York, and you’re sitting there in the throng of people, every single one of them, according to this idea, has a sort of God-li-ness in them.

That guy on your left in a suit talking way too loud on his phone. 

That other guy on your right, who spends his nights on the trains.

The exhausted girl who’s pissed off, on the way home from work.

The little dude who’s selling candy from a cardboard box. 

His mom, who’s down on the other side of the car.

Thinking about this with Fundamental Human Dignity in mind, none of them are background noise.

Each person — whether they’re annoying or depressed, housed or unhoused, powerful or invisible — Fundamental Human Dignity preaches that they are blessed by the Creator of the universe. 

According to this belief:

The guy in the suit. Honored by God.

The man sleeping on the seat. Honored by God.

The girl across from you, Honored by God.

The little brother with his candy. Honored by God.

His mom. Honored by God.

And that dignity that comes from being created is not somehow earned. It is not conditional. It is actually infinite, and it is shared.

Father Cecero, Rabbi Vehlow, Imam Rahman all agree that we all must recognize this inherent dignity of all the members of this human family. 

The only thing is, that because human dignity isn’t bestowed by policy, the government is able to disregard it.

Actually, the government, sometimes, works to undermine it.

That’s in a second. Stick around.

COLBY

Alright, Act II.

So, in the conversations surrounding human dignity, especially in this era of Mass Deportations, scholars and activists often talk about providing sanctuary. 

Maybe you have an idea what that means. Maybe you don’t. But to really understand the kinda radical values of fundamental human dignity, we gotta talk about it. About where the phrase Providing Sanctuary comes from. 

And so we’re going to go back in time, to the late 20th century, in the middle of Latin America. 

We’re gonna zoom in on the country of El Salvador. And a Catholic church service, officiated by this guy named Oscar.

He spoke in Spanish. I’ll translate for you.

OSCAR

Yo quisiera hacer un llamamiento de manera especial...

COLBY

He’s saying: I want to make a call, in a special manner...

OSCAR

a los hombres del ejército...

COLBY

to the men of the army...

OSCAR

y en concreto a las bases de la Guardia Nacional, de la policía de los cuarteles.

COLBY

and in particular to the ranks of the National Guard, the police, and the military barracks.

OSCAR

Hermanos...

COLBY

Brothers...

OSCAR

son de nuestro mismo pueblo...

COLBY

you are of the same people...

OSCAR

matan a sus mismos hermanos campesinos...

COLBY

you kill your own rural brothers and sisters...

OSCAR

y ante una orden de matar que dé un hombre, debe de prevalecer la ley de Dios que dice: No matar. 

COLBY

and upon an order to kill that’s given by a man, what must prevail is the law of God, which says: Do not kill.

By the way, it’s March, 1980.

OSCAR

Ningún soldado...

COLBY

No soldier...

OSCAR

está obligado..

COLBY

is obligated...

OSCAR

a obedecer una orden contra la ley de Dios.

COLBY

to obey an order against the law of God.

Yeah, it’s 1980, and this tiny country in Latin America is in the midst of a brutal civil war.

OSCAR

Una ley inmoral...

COLBY

An immoral law...

OSCAR

nadie tiene que cumplirla. 

COLBY

no one has to follow.

And if you can’t already tell, Oscar is calling soldiers to not follow orders to kill.

OSCAR

Ya es tiempo...

COLBY

It’s time...

OSCAR

de que recuperen su conciencia...

COLBY

that you recovered your conscience...

OSCAR

y que obedezcan antes a su conciencia que a la orden del pecado.

COLBY

and that you obeyed your conscience before a sinful order.

He’s calling them to repentance.

OSCAR

La iglesia,

COLBY

The church,

OSCAR

defensor de los derechos de Dios,

COLBY

defender of God’s rights,

OSCAR

de la ley de Dios,

COLBY

of God’s law

OSCAR

de la dignidad humana,

COLBY

of human dignity,

OSCAR

de la persona,

COLBY

of the person,

OSCAR

no puede quedarse callada,

COLBY

cannot stay quiet,

OSCAR

ante tanta abominación.

COLBY

before such abomination.

OSCAR

Queremos que el gobierno tome en serio,

COLBY

We want the government to take seriously,

OSCAR

que de nada sirven las reformas,

COLBY

that reforms are of no use,

OSCAR

si van teñidas con tanta sangre.

COLBY

if they’re going to be dyed red with so much blood.

OSCAR

En nombre de Dios, pues,

COLBY

In God’s name, then,

OSCAR

y en nombre de este sufrido pueblo,

COLBY

and in the name of this suffering people,

OSCAR

cuyos lamentos suben hasta el cielo cada día más tumultuosos,

COLBY

whose laments rise to heaven, each day growing more riotous,

OSCAR

les suplico,

COLBY

I beg you,

OSCAR

les ruego,

COLBY

I plea to you,

OSCAR

les ordeno,

COLBY

I order you,

OSCAR

en nombre de Dios, cese la represion!

COLBY

in the name of God, cease the repression!

This is the Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero. He's a Catholic leader, and outspoken voice for peace. It’s a time when his country is entrenched in violence. That was the end of a homily he gave on the 23rd of March, 1980.

And the next day, a Monday, March 24th, Oscar is shot and killed.

Assassinated in a church. While celebrating evening Mass.

This didn’t come out of nowhere. A civil war had been brewing for some time. 

LEO

In the 70s, people started fleeing El Salvador. There were attempts to reform — redistribute land.

COLBY

This is Fordham Professor Leo Guardado. He was born in El Salvador. He’s written a book that deals with all this. We thought he’d be the best voice to tell you this story.

LEO

The saying is: That there were 14 families that controlled 85% of the land in the country. Now, it was more than 14, and it may not have been 85%. But the point being that there were very few families really left over from the colonial era, that essentially controlled the land, the economy, and that kept people poor.

COLBY

A military Junta takes over the government in a Coup d’etat in ‘79.

And there’s Archbishop Romero’s assassination in 1980. And —

LEO

The country, essentially, descends into a civil war.

...

And then you have other priests, religious — and of course, you have lots of poor people being killed. Anyone who was standing up to the government, who wants land reform, who wants rights to unionize, rights for teachers, is becoming a target of the state.

...

Yeah by that point, it’s really just the military that’s kinda running things. The president, as I said, is a puppet of the oligarchy. Really, it’s the oligarchy that’s running things. And then, the military below them, and so forth.

COLBY

And the United States, under President Jimmy Carter, starts funding this new government.

LEO

Yes, the United States has sided with the landed elite throughout the history of the country. And right throughout the civil war, they were — they essentially provided the money for the military. Oscar Romero, before he was killed, wrote to Jimmy Carter, asking to please stop providing the funds. If there’s no money then there’s no guns, there’s no bullets. Then there can’t be a war.

...

But money kept being funneled into this country the size of Massachusetts. And instead the war went on for 12 years. With the funds of the United States.

COLBY

And then, just a few months after Oscar is shot and killed —

LEO

In July of 1980, 26 Salvadorans get lost in Organ Pipe National Monument. Which is a desert in the borderlands between Mexico and southern Arizona. 

...

They were fleeing El Salvador. They were trying to cross into the US. They got lost with their coyotes. And about 13 of them didn’t make it. And another 10 to 13 did survive. And were essentially rescued by the Border Patrol at the time. Taken to Tucson, Arizona. 

...

They were going to be deported, once they were hydrated and so forth, they were going to be sent right back to the war. 

COLBY

Deported back to El Salvador— that is, until some locals began to speak up about it. 

LEO

Not only is it against international law, they said, but like it’s inhumane. 

COLBY

These locals were Christians: Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, the like. There were also Jewish people speaking up. And non-religious too. Anyway they’re in Tucson, Arizona. A city right next to that fatal desert crossing.

LEO

The news for this, hit the New York Times. I mean, it hit national news everywhere. And people that had not been paying attention to El Salvador, all of a sudden, kind of said: Well, what’s going on in El Salvador?

COLBY

And the more people looked into the atrocities being committed in that country — the military dictatorship, the roaming death squads, the mass casualties — the more it seemed that sending these Salvadorans back was a morally-corrupt move.

LEO

At the very least, by the end of 1980, either because of Oscar Romero’s killing, because of the news of these Salvadorans being lost and found in the desert, or because of the American churchwomen who were killed on December 2, 1980 — 1980 was a year when people in the United States, the everyday citizen, the everyday person here, even if they don’t watch the news, would have said: Something’s going on in El Salvador.

COLBY

And so these Christians and others started actually doing something. Because, as Leo explains:

LEO

If you applied, in the early 80s, if you applied for refugee status or asylum, it was denied. Systematically denied. And you were just sent right back to war.

COLBY

Applying for asylum, for those who aren’t familiar, is officially requesting refuge, protection from the Government. 

You ask the government to let you remain in the country. To protect you. Because it’s too dangerous to go back to yours. 

But the big problem for these Salvadorans, was that the US, remember, was funding the war that they were fleeing.

LEO

It was not in the US interest to recognize that the money they were giving to the military in El Salvador was causing people to leave the country. Essentially, for the US to recognize them as refugees, would be to recognize that they are causing the refugee situation. 

...

So, quickly, the communities, humanitarian groups realized: We cannot work with the government on this. Because they are not getting a fair trial.

COLBY

But more and more, people were arriving —

LEO

literally every day. Crossing fences, crossing — there was no border all then, but you know, crossing over. There was just a little fence.

...

And they quickly realized that they could not depend on the government to give them protection.

COLBY

So these justice-oriented Southern Arizona Christians and others —

LEO

They started to create this network. 

...

And this is what begins the, more formally, the Sanctuary movement. What some called the underground railroad. Which was a set of interrelated communities that went south of the border, and north of the border, and then eventually, by the mid 80s spread from Boston to San Francisco, and up to Canada. Just this vast network of Churches, synagogues, homes, where people were protected, moved. It really was going from one shelter to another, to another. And it was a way of buying time until the government could give people a fair opportunity to be recognized as refugees fleeing war.

COLBY

So, what are these communities doing? Well, practically they snuck these immigrant war refugees  —

LEO

into the United States. Or I guess you could say smuggled into the United States. Because that’s literally what they were doing. But they were doing so for the furtherance of people’s lives who otherwise be killed south of the border.

COLBY

You know, providing protection from violence, that’s actually rooted in the Christian scriptures and early church tradition.

Leo gets more into his book. It’s called Church as Sanctuary. If you’re interested, we’ll put a link in our transcript.

But essentially, if you're reading the Jewish scriptures, there’s a couple places where the Hebrew God tells his people to establish cities of refuge.

LEO

A city of refuge is a place, a territory, that has been demarcated as a place where people and flee to and have their life be protected.

COLBY

These ancient peoples of these scriptures, they

LEO

— realized that there would be times when people would commit certain acts, that could be even murder. Sometimes willingly, sometimes accidentally.

COLBY

And the instead of instituting laws that would punish murder in a way that

LEO

— would be familiar, an eye for an eye type of thing. Instead of taking their life being the consequence, what if we had these set apart places —

...

What if we interrupted the cycles of violence.

COLBY

The thinking is, essentially, that everyone has Fundamental Human Dignity, and we are morally obligated to uphold that. 

Right, that’s exactly what Oscar Romero was explaining earlier. 

That the law of God, which says: Do not kill. Must prevail over an order to kill that’s given by a man.

Believing in Fundamental Human Dignity means being morally obligated to interrupt the cycles of violence. 

And that might mean having to smuggle these immigrant refugees into the United States, so that they’re not deported back to a war zone.

That’s what people sometimes mean by providing sanctuary: working to protect vulnerable people from violence.

But on the smuggling thing. What would you call that? Is that legal? There’s some part of this that sounds like it was following the tradition of civil disobedience. You know, breaking the law to show how unjust the law is. 

But when you read more into this, you find out that that’s actually not how these church-going activists saw themselves. 

They didn’t think they were breaking the law!

Listen to this. One of the people that was helping lead this movement wrote an essay. An essay justifying their actions. Here’s what he says, quote:

JIM CORBETT

Sanctuary for Central American refugees is a civil initiative to comply with national and international laws that federal officials are violating.

COLBY

This is wild. He keeps going. Quote:

JIM CORBETT

Civil initiative means doing justice, not just resisting injustice. This usually required that we assume government functions on an emergency basis.

COLBY

Assume government functions?!

Here’s Leo explaining it.

LEO

the communities in the borderlands realized: No, no no. It’s not them who is breaking the law. It’s the government who is breaking the law.

...

If people show up at the footsteps of your country, you have a moral obligation and by international law — and that’s always a fuzzy territory, whether domestic law recognizes international law. But there is this general humanity understanding, and understanding of humanity, that you do not send people to a war to die. 

...

So the communities in the borderlands wanted to really emphasize: We are not breaking the law. We are not engaging in civil disobedience. It is the government who is breaking its own law. And thus, until the government actually does what the government is supposed to do, and abide by its laws and the international of humanity, then we will take it upon ourselves to protect people whom the government is not protecting. 

COLBY

In the 1980s, as civil war was raging in El Salvador. One side, the government, was propped up by US funding. And these people of faith in the dadlands of Arizona saw themselves as the proper authorities when it came to who should stay and who should go.

The American government, in their mind, had forfeited its right to be recognized. It wasn’t fulfilling proper government functions like providing sanctuary to war refugees. Because it wasn’t acknowledging its own complicity in the war, and so it wasn’t protecting the people the laws were meant to protect.

LEO

It’s a way of, I would say, going deep into the roots of democracy. And saying: When the government fails to do its job, the people not only have a responsibility but a duty to do what the government fails to do.

COLBY

And these church-goers did all this, without much of a peep.

LEO 

So, the first two years, they were not public. It was called the silent stage of the sanctuary movement, and that’s where the network was really established.

COLBY

But then, it almost became too big to hide.

LEO

They decide to go public on March 24, 1982, which was the second anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

COLBY

The thinking went, Leo explained,

LEO

If we do not have the support of people, if people don’t know that we’re doing this, then the government can shut us down, and no one will have even known that this existed. And we will disappear. And that was the end of that.

COLBY

There was also the possibility that the government would shut them down anyway. It had the power to, of course, storm the churches and forcibly deport these Salvadoran immigrants.

LEO

It was a risk!

COLBY

But, for these discerning church-goers, it was a risk worth taking. 

LEO

At the core, it was an attempt to walk with people. To protect people. To keep people from being apprehended by the government, so they would not be sent back to the war.

...

There were all kinds of issues that arose with this, as well. I mean, you can imagine savior complex. A white community in, I don’t know, the Northeast. And they’re like: Oh, yes, send us some Salvadorans. And they get there. And then: Oh. And they start complaining about: Well, they’re so ungrateful. Or: they want to have a bigger role than we’re ready to give them. You’ve got to remember, some of these people, they’re coming from surviving a war. Some were well educated. Some were activists. Some were organizers. Some were union leaders. Some were just campesinos, you know, who worked on the corn in their land and don’t have much education. But issues — cultural, social, class issues, gender issues begin to arise very quickly. So, none of this — I don’t want to romanticize any of this. But this is part of the reality of any movement, or any encounter across difference. 

...

It sounds really cool. And like I want to be part of this In Thing. Let’s be a sanctuary community. And then you realize, like: Oh. This is real. This is harder than I thought. Or: This is forcing me to confront my own racism or xenophobia or classism, etc.

...

This continued throughout the 1980s. By the end of the 1980s, it started to fade out. The laws were changed. The situation in El Salvador hadn’t been resolved. But a decade of this — people were tired, also. Churches, as I said, had realized that, oof, we’ve had someone living here for a year. Or two years or so. And so people were fatigued. And, again, it’s the initial energy of: I want to be part of a movement. And then: Are you ready to do the accompaniment?

COLBY

I mean, that is the question: How far are you willing to go to act on the beliefs you hold so dear? And what if the work isn’t sexy or flashy. But the hard, day in, day out work of assuming government functions. How far are you willing to go to uphold Fundamental Human Dignity?

COLBY

Welcome back to REVOKED? This is Act III.

Okay, so Catholic, christian and other people of faith were helping shelter Salvadoran immigrants from deportations in the 1980s.

But what does that have to do with Fordham, and the visa turmoil?

Well the outline of that situation, in some ways, looks close to this current moment. That’s not to say these Fordham international students were gonna be sent back to war zones if they were deported. 

But they were, all of a sudden, kind of undocumented. The government had taken away their records.

And so that raises the same question: if Fordham is a part of a religious tradition that believes in Fundamental Human Dignity, what should it do?

There’s this one Catholic student at Fordham that has been wrestling through this very question for a little bit now. And we wanted to bring you into that quandary.

Her name is:

ANNAMARIE

AnnaMarie Pacione. I’m a senior at Rose Hill. I study humanitarian studies and theology. 

COLBY

And, she’s like a big believer in these Jesuit Values. Those are things she actually wants to live out. And, to clarify, Jesuit values, as in,

ANNAMARIE

Deeply believing that I am interdependent to all beings. And if I take that seriously, that necessitates action and responsibility, when some of those beings are being oppressed, wherever that violence is coming from. Now I say that, and I also feel hypocritical of myself. How often do I fail to live up to those values everyday? I think even by being a Fordham student I’m not living up to those values.

COLBY

I mean, that’s how much she cares about this stuff.

ANNAMARIE

That has arisen from my studying of theology at Fordham, and the ways that my spirituality has evolved through things like Campus Ministry at Fordham. 

COLBY

I just want to reflect what I’m hearing. It sounds like you’re saying, according to how you read the bible, and how you think about your own beliefs: that both you, and this Catholic, Jesuit University, are called by the creator of the world to protect those who are in a foreign place, and vulnerable. 

ANNAMARIE

Yeah, for sure, and how do we do that? 

COLBY

And what’s the answer to that question? 

ANNAMARIE

Well, maybe it means resisting the government in a really bold way.

COLBY

She’s saying resist the government here, because she’s seeing the things we already told you about. The escalated detentions. 

The skyrocketing arrests. 

The deportations. 

But she’s also gotten an intimate glimpse at this immigration system. 

Not as much as others. But more than a lot of students at Fordham, I would say.

ANNAMARIE

I was working at a shelter for migrants at the US, Mexico border this summer. And so, was in close proximity with refugees. But one particular story that I’m thinking of is when an International Student, who had their visa revoked, was bonded out of detention, was taken to our house, and I was doing an intake with them. 

COLBY

Can I ask — can I ask, was this a student who had just been deported out of America? Or they were in America? 

ANNAMARIE

They were in America. I believe that they had overstayed their visa. But, besides the point. Doesn’t necessitate the detention she was subjected to. And taken, moved around, place to place, across the country. Did not receive her passport or her ID back. Had to pay, of course, thousands and thousands of dollars to bond out of detention. No family is here, a very scary situation. And it was early on in my time there working. So it was my first person that I had been doing an intake with, that we spoke english with each other. English is my first language, so I felt most comfortable. Like, okay, there’s no language barrier of my struggling spanish to be a barrier between the emotions in this situation. It was also the first person that was like exactly my age. There is no difference between us, but the fact that I was born in this place, and you were born in this place. And it was just confronting with the utter sorrow of how unfair this is. 

....

So, when I was with this person who had their visa revoked and were in detention, and were in a difficult, dicey, situation. That was the first time I thought about that in a real way. Like: there is no difference between us. And who am I, to be born here and have all this privilege? That is not something that I just accept, or feel really guilty about. But it asks for a response. What that response is, I’m still figuring out. But I think that it’s a question a lot of Fordham students can be asking ourselves.

COLBY

What AnnaMarie is saying in all of this, is that she’s still kind of coming to an answer. She’s seeing all this injustice — and like the faith leaders we heard at the beginning of this chapter — she thinks this rhetoric and policy isn’t respectful, or dignifying. But more than that, if the question is: How far are you willing to go to act on the beliefs you hold so dear? She wants her answer to be: As far as I need to go!

Even if that means being loud. Even if that means becoming a target. If that’s what faith demands, so be it.

Not everyone’s on board with that. Even people who care about this issue and sympathize. Not everyone’s on board with that.

Professor Sarah Lockhart studies immigration and politics. 

She cares deeply about immigration justice. She’s a part of a group of Fordham professors that study it together — that’s the Initiative for Migrants, Migration and Human Dignity.

But when I brought up the idea that maybe the right response to all this stuff, according to some people, is loud, vocal opposition, she wasn’t immediately convinced.

SARAH

Vocal, like where do they want — vocal in what sense? To the students? To the media? Who in the media? On what — what does that look like? What does being more vocal look like to students?

COLBY

Here’s how AnnaMarie answered that question when I asked her, a couple weeks later.

ANNAMARIE

Like, why not everybody rally? Like Everybody rally! Like, create a wall? Like, resist in any way that we can? 

COLBY

Declare Sanctuary? 

ANNAMARIE

Yeah.

COLBY

Sanctuary! Like what those Arizonans were doing. This is different from the stance we talked about last chapter with Fordham public safety. AnnaMarie is saying refuse to cooperate, even if they have a warrant!

The religious values override the legal requirements.

But, like really? To Professor Lockhart, that seemed way easier said than done.

SARAH

No, but I  — right now we have the President sending, wants to send the military into cities. It’s not just a statement. It’s about the actual safety of immigrants, of our students, of our staff. And making a statement like that — and this is my personal opinion — might feel good. But it could actually put people at real risk. And so when you’re actually the person in charge that’s making that decision, yeah, you don’t want to create a target. What’s the point in declaring sanctuary when the government said they will not respect sanctuary?

COLBY

Sure, easier said than done. But maybe still worth it — to AnnaMarie, at least.

ANNAMARIE

I just have a vision of all Fordham — the whole Fordham community running to the MetroNorth gate where there’s ICE officers trying to get on campus. Does that mean they won’t still be able to get on campus and probably detain these students who  are vulnerable?

COLBY

Again, Sarah Lockhart:

SARAH

So, that doesn’t create sanctuary. Saying it actually doesn’t create the sanctuary.

ANNAMARIE

Maybe not. But at least we’re doing something about it? 

COLBY

What would the purpose of it be? 

ANNAMARIE

Because we’re saying no! If we just are like: Oh, no, we can’t assure anyone of their safety, it doesn’t feel like we’re trying hard enough.

COLBY

But Sarah brought some perspective,

SARAH

I mean, maybe that’s the role of the governors? But I think because it actually does create a target. And if your goal is to protect — instead of some commitment to some esoteric, philosophical viewpoint — is actually to say: I’m caring for the people in my community. Creating a target, without a clear payoff, I think that’s the burden of leadership, that it’s not just about the right thing to do, but it’s thinking about: Who pays the consequences for that right thing to do? Who benefits? Who gets hurt? And if it’s the people that are the most vulnerable, that actually pay the price for saying the right thing, then that’s a real burden, and I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. 

ANNAMARIE

Again, it doesn’t mean that we’ll overcome. Because, it’s important to realize that, yes, there are power structures, and there is vulnerability, even with institutions — with Fordham, in a way.

SARAH

The cities that had sanctuary policies, the churches had sanctuary policies, that wasn’t really being violated — or it was like the federal government was like: Okay we’re giving up on that. And not pushing against it. And so I hadn’t really thought much about sanctuary policies until this administration, where they very clearly said they weren’t going to recognize or respect those spaces. 

COLBY

These interviews with Sarah and AnnaMarie — they happened weeks apart. But what we’re doing here is placing them next to each other. We’re reconstructing this fractured conversation into one unified tape of radio discernment. 

AnnaMarie and Sarah are not talking directly to each other, but they’re commenting on a central question: When you believe something is wrong — how do you fight it? Loudly or softly?

And one more voice we’re adding to the mix: Leo Guardado, that professor who explained to us the history of Sanctuary just a few minutes ago.

Again, we’re editing together his responses with Sarah’s, to make you think about this question yourself. 

He gave us his take.

LEO

Throughout its history, Sanctuary has both been recognized and violated. 

SARAH

But now we’re talking about a government who has explicitly said that they would not recognize — that they would violate that sanctuary.

LEO

The government, yes, does not have to respect that. In fact, that’s never been the case that the government respects that. Even in the 300s. Even in the Roman Empire. The Empire would go into the church to drag people out.

SARAH

I think the power of that statement depends on the political moment, as well. And I think this is a political moment, I don’t know, I think it’s really risky.

LEO

I think this is exactly when sanctuary has a place — it’s needed. I mean, sanctuary is not for quote, unquote, regular times. If there ever is a regular time in society.

...

Sanctuary is specifically an emergency measure. It’s exactly when government collapses. It’s exactly when you cannot depend on government — when societal norms and rule of law are just falling and cracking apart. 

...

It’s exactly in the midst of Hitlerisms, Nazisms, Totalitarianisms, Dictatorships that are aggressively shooting people. You know, it’s exactly in those moments when sanctuary comes alive.

COLBY

To be clear: Guardado is saying Sanctuary could be a necessary practice for our time. But that doesn’t mean it has to be so loud.

LEO

Because it may be that you need to provide Sanctuary in silence, not publicly — like the early years of the Sanctuary movement. Because that’s what protects people. Or, it may be the opposite. That the only way you can protect people is by being public about it.

COLBY

And really, this was a discussion happening at the various levels throughout Fordham in the Spring of 2025. Some administrators discussed it, not in religious terms. They used a phrase we first touched on in Chapter 3. Student activist Michael Magazine explained that Fordham Admin — 

MICHAEL

effectively, go with the stance of: If we don’t make enough noise, we might go under Trump Admin’s radar. That was one of the first things that they were telling us — about the Lighting Rod. They kept bring up the lightning rod. Oh, well, if Fordham says we’re not going to do this, and we’re going to take a stand. We become a lightning rod. 

COLBY

And he’s — I’ll just say, he’s not convinced.

MICHAEL

Which — when we heard it, was already like: That’s the dumbest, that has never worked.

COLBY

And the lightning rod idea, right, the notion that people who make the noise, who stick their head out, who are most noticeable: they get struck first. This idea, or I guess the answer to this question, is what made Fordham Administration act the way it did.

This was never made explicit. Right? There wasn’t ever a big email to the student body that said: Hey, we’re going to be really quiet because we don’t want to be targeted. But students could kind of intuit this stance. 

Here’s how one student activist, Amal, explained it. Again, Amal is not her real name. We agreed to keep her anonymous so that she could talk candidly about her activism.

AMAL

What we had come to the conclusion about, was that Fordham, based off the emails they were sending, it was obvious that they didn’t want to push too hard. Because they didn’t want what happened to Harvard, for example — who got a lot of their federal funding taken away — to happen to us, at Fordham.

COLBY

Other professors also explained this line of thinking. Like Annika Hinze, she was one of the professors on the Tiger Team.

ANNIKA

I think that the question is always: When you stand up, does it make a difference? Right? So, should universities and law firms stand up to the administration in terms of dictating their curricula? That’s a different question, right? Because there, they actually have some say. But in terms of visa revocations, or attacks on international students and faculty, I think what universities can do is very limited. So I’m not sure, again, what else Fordham could have done, that would have actually made a difference, right?

COLBY

Or professor Carey Kasten, also a member of the Tiger Team. She said that to her, on the question of what Fordham should do,

CAREY

I think the tactic is: Keep your head down until it really matters. They haven’t come after us yet.

COLBY

But — I mean don’t forget, the whole point of this series is that Fordham was hit! They did come after us. When I brought this up to Carey, she compared Fordham to other universities as well.

CAREY

They haven’t come for us the way they went after Harvard or UVA.

COLBY

I want to zoom out for just a second. 

The fact that students, professors, Fordham administrators — really, the Fordham community writ large. The fact that we’re trying to puzzle out how big of an attack is worth acting on. The fact that part of this new political reality is considering when is the right time to resist. That — that’s something to highlight. 

The US government did something to the legal status of Fordham students. The US government threw their status into disarray and turmoil. Without a trial. Without a stated reason. Without a clear way to respond. 

And the Fordham community is still trying to figure out if that's worth really, really, really loudly resisting.

That just shows you what kind of political environment we’re in right now. Where really vocal, loud dissent, that’s a risk now. That’s a risk.

Other students were thinking about this as well. Both domestic and international students.

COLBY

Did Fordham speak out about that enough, in your mind? 

SOPHIA

No, I don’t think so. 

COLBY

What do you wish they did? Did they need to speak out? 

SOPHIA

I think so, personally.  

COLBY

This is Sophia Skelton. She was the Co-President of the Humanitarian Student Union at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus.

SOPHIA

Like, a Jesuit value is social justice. I don’t know — I have never heard a Jesuit priest speak, who’s not like: We have to fight for these social issues. So, I feel like if we’re advertised as a Jesuit school, and we’re advertising these values, I feel like they should have spoken out more and earlier.

COLBY

Of course, like Professor Sarah Lockhart said earlier, there’s risks to that. Loss of funding. Being a lightning rod! Getting hit again!

COLBY

Is that worth it to you? What do you think? 

SOPHIA

I don’t know if this is controversial, but yeah. I mean yeah, it’s risky. And there were already examples out there of other schools being targeted. But I feel like it’s better to stand with your values than — and I don’t know, we’re a private institution. So we’re some of the other schools. But I don’t know. I still kind of feel like they should have said more, earlier. 

...

Yeah, I mean, it made me frustrated that this school — that I love going to and supposedly have these Jesuit beliefs, and doing for others kind of thing — wasn’t really giving that as an example.

COLBY

And — just to be clear. Sophia thinks Fordham Administration — President Tetlow — ought to have been more vocal about this. Before it even came to Fordham. When it was already happening to other students at other colleges and universities.

SOPHIA

I’d say they took a little too much time to be careful.

...

I was worried she wouldn’t say anything.

COLBY

Not every student is where Sophia and AnnaMarie are on this. 

Riya — she’s that international student from India, she wanted more from Fordham. But not as much.

RIYA

There’s just two emails that we got about this issue. I don’t know if I deleted some, but I only remember two anyways. And, again, they were pretty on brand for a school’s public announcement. There was very neutral language. It was very reassuring in some senses, yes. But it was, again, all they could say at the moment.

COLBY

Riya said that maybe, one option is just another internal, all school email in the middle of April. You know, kind of straddle the line between totally outspoken, and totally quiet.

RIYA

To be like: We’re still working on this. If you have any troubles — my point earlier, about President Tetlow opening her doors to students.

COLBY

And then there were students like Lee, an international student from China. He also didn’t really think that Fordham had much power in this case. 

LEE

I don’t know if Fordham would actually go against ICE.

COLBY

I told him: The official policy is they would let ICE on campus, if they had a warrant. 

LEE

I mean, yeah, if they have a warrant, what can you do about it, right? I mean, if they truly want to pick someone and take them, I believe there's nothing you can do. Even, you’re from a NYPD, you just can’t fight government, right?

COLBY

And — honestly — he said he didn't really want Fordham to speak out.

LEE

For me, it might be because of my personality, I think working quietly, but get things done if better than being loud and getting nothing done. Right? Well, if you can get things done, people will notice. And it’s going to go out word of mouth, right? Sometimes, I realize this, some protesters they just want to protest but not solving things, right? Especially when things are sensitive and really complicated, right? Like you said, if ICE has a warrants, there is nothing you can do about it, right? So I think, especially on these kinds of sensitive stuffs, you should keep a low profile. Yeah. But definitely do stuff, yeah.

COLBY

I mean, this is what the Fordham community was thinking about during the Spring 2025 semester. And it’s continued until now. 

When Fordham’s professed values are violated, when the legal status of Fordham students is thrown into turmoil, What Should Fordham Do Next? 

Should Fordham stay quiet, and silently serve? Should Fordham declare sanctuary loudly? 

Whatever the decision, Leo Guardado and Sarah Lockhard did agree: 

LEO

That is for the community to discern. Who is Fordham? 

SARAH

It’s not just one person.

LEO

I mean, who decides that? Is it the President?

...

Is it the faculty senate?

SARAH

It’s not a hierarchical institution, actually. And it’s messy. And we have shared governance. And faculty don’t agree on things.

LEO

Is it the union?

SARAH

And we have a Provost, as well. It’s not just a president. And it employs thousands of people. We also have a board that the president is accountable to.

LEO

Is it the faculty?

...

Is it the students?

SARAH

So, it’s not just students. It’s also staff. It’s also faculty. It’s also the board and alumni.

LEO

Who is Fordham? Is it the alumni?

...

I mean, these are amorphous realities.

SARAH

And it’s not just about public statements, right, or emails. It’s about what’s happening in the actual decision making — and the way in which different constituencies that care about the University are engaged.

LEO

Fordham, as a community, can be, or is a Sanctuary community to the degree that the people who identify as part of the Fordham community live into ways of living with others who do not have protection — in a way that protects them, or that accompanies them in their journey. 

...

So, to be a sanctuary community, I think more than the symbolic labels or gestures, is to learn how to walk with migrants in our midst. Our undocumented students. The families of our undocumented students. The undocumented families around the campus. And ask ourselves, again, what do they need? What kind of protections do they need? 

...

Whether we are or are not — despite what we say we are publicly whether we are or are not a Sanctuary campus — living into it is the more important thing. And it would worry me if we said we were a Sanctuary campus and had no idea what in the world we meant by that — or if we did not have a way of actually living into that.

...

Let the actions begin at whatever level. Let there emerge communities of protection. And at some point it will be clear to others whether we are or are not a Sanctuary community. And we won’t even have to say that we are. People will know that we are.

COLBY

As the Spring semester of 2025 continued on, things got much worse. And then, in a moment, much better. And then bad, again!

And through all that, these questions still weighed on the minds of the amorphous reality that is the Fordham community. What was it supposed to do in all of this? Stand up? Sit down? Shout? Stay quiet?

These were the questions Fordham was asking itself. And there were actually some answers to those questions. Times when it became a little clearer how Fordham Admin felt about this issue.

Times when it became a little clearer what Fordham Admin would do about this issue.

That’s next time, on REVOKED?