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Leslie Ortega continues her second baccalaureate in botany in a university in California. She obtained her first diploma in business administration in December 2016. It was before US President Donald Trump took office. The experience was then very different.
“Obama was president when I was at the University from 2012 to 2016 and I remember how happy everyone was with me,” said Ortega. “There was an unconscious sensation where we felt safe. Now being at school, I notice that there is certainly more fear in classrooms. ”
With Trump in power for a second term, Ortega said she saw a major change. It is not easier to be blind to the realities of the way that so many lives change.
“Existing in a world where your neighbor or your favorite catering seller can be torn off in the street on the basis of color and occupation of their skin is impossible to hide,” she said. “It always took place in Obama, but we had pink glasses when he was in power.”
As a person who recently graduated two months ago with a baccalaureate at arts focused on ethnic studies, I must agree with Ortega. I cannot ignore the country’s current political state, especially since students and universities remain potential targets of the American immigration and customs raids (ICE).
An attack on various perspectives
In addition to this, conservatives actively take measures that threaten diversity, equity and inclusion measures and certain subjects such as the critical theory of the race. My major, rooted in the critical theory of racie, is considered controversial by some because it teaches students to critically analyze information and to question authority in a sense. Ethnic studies courses generally learn to engage people to discover history in non -white perspectives, to reveal a legacy of imperialism and racism.
Actions that make it difficult to teach or learn these concepts are promulgated by people in power who seem to lack consideration on how marginalized communities will be affected.
At the University of California, I attended, two emails from the administration addressed the subject of immigration during the last half. The first was an acting president in February 2025, which described the advice for university employees and students on how to interact with ice officers if they presented themselves on the campus.
He said that like a large part of the campus is open to the general public, it is therefore open to federal officers.
However, ice agents could not enter areas not open to the public such as residences, confidential meeting rooms, employee offices or classrooms while the university was in session. This email has also described the resources that students and staff could turn to the Coalition for human immigrants’ rights And a new center for “dreamers” – undocumented people who had been brought to the United States as a child. He also explained how to create an immigration preparation plan.
A second e-mail was sent two months later, with fast guide cards and a link to a page of immigration resources on the University’s website.
Will the campus be a dangerous paradise?
It’s currently summer. The way the university will really react if the ice should appear on the campus is really in the air. It is one thing to express a concern and another to intervene in front of injustice to protect targeted individuals.
Although I do not go back to campus this fall, I have no doubt that it will be students and colored staff who will ultimately serve as a first line of defense. Given the way in which the university has reacted in the past to the efforts of student activists, I would not be surprised if the administration of the campus made little ice in the event of ice.
Around the country, academics across the country have seen the detention of militant students by glacial agents. The simple fact of defending the current genocide of Israel of the Palestinian people in Gaza was considered a crime worthy of detention and deportation.
These detainees included Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk from Tofts University. Khalil spent more than three months in detention before his release on June 20.
Student arrests simply for having spoken of Angers students like Ortega.
“It is exasperating to hear about the visas of the students revoked for their position on the support of Palestine during a presidency which criminalizes opposition to the status quo,” said Ortega. “(This) refers to anyone who criticizes American ideology, the military complex or simply the American flag.”
Arrests in the city of Angels
Los Angeles saw a wave of arrest of undocumented immigrants. According to the Los Angeles Times, Nearly 2,800 people were picked up by ice agents masked in the streets, on employment sites, Home Depot parking lots and even hearings outside the immigration court since June 6, 2025.
Throughout the country, these figures could increase. In July, the US Congress adopted a national budget entitled “Big Beautiful Bill” which will increase considerably The number of glacial agents and detention centers.
I consider this bill as a means of cementing discrimination against immigrants in the American legal framework. We already see the rapid construction and the opening of detention centers such as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida – a city of tent that can contain up to 3,000 people
According to public and internal data from the American customs and border protection agency, collected by NBC News, more than 56,000 People were detained in ICE detention centers on August 1, 2025.
All of this created a state of fear. I spoke to someone who lives in California and currently has a student visa holder. I do not identify the person because of the fear that it makes a target. The student recently obtained a master’s degree in education and is currently in the admission process to an educational program.
“There is a culture here (in the United States) that when they hear that you do not have a social security number, they stop helping you as if you were a pariah,” said the person. “I couldn’t work on campus, I lost a lot of opportunities because I didn’t have a social security number. Sometimes I could get allowances or scholarships, but it was because of people who understand immigrants. ”
Silence of student activism
They now have a work visa and hope to obtain a permanent residence, but given all the threats that the current presidential administration has given to holders of student visas, they wonder about their prospects.
“The silence of students’ activists send a message to everyone if you dissolve yourself, if you protest, if you do not agree with what is happening now, there will be consequences,” they said.
They said they were politically active, but no longer feel safe to do it here, or at least to the same degree.
“There is an executive decree that says that the first thing they are going to look at on you is your social media, so you can’t even publish on what you think, what you defend,” they said. “You can no longer talk about the current genocide, because then, all the money you have invested in the modification of your migratory status will be thrown in the trash. You give all your money, it is dispossession without violence, you make this huge sacrifice and then you do not want to lose it, well, so you are obliged, you are silent.”
I choose to censor the name of the person for the good of their own security and their well-being, I cannot help but ask myself if it represents another way in which immigrants are silenced.
Fight desensitization
All this is to say that being a person of color and a student during this presidential administration was exceptionally difficult. This is particularly true for someone like Ortega, who frequents school in a mainly white area.
“It is emotionally and mentally exhausting to focus on your existing safety on a campus that does not support you if you choose to wear a keffiyeh or a patch in opposition from a criminal as president,” said Ortega.
I recognize that as a person of color, I may not have the same advantages as someone who is white. As an American citizen, I have a certain sense of protection in speaking. But it is my Mexican and Guatemalan heritage that feeds my fight.
My existence is the result of immigration; I would not be where I am today if it was not for the members of my family who chose to come to the United States.
Although it can be easy to become desensitized, in particular with a new devastating title every day, I urge others to keep a certain sense of hope by leaning over community resistance. It is only by abandoning the conviction that “it does not affect me personally, so I don’t care” that we can really start to dismantle power systems.
Only seven months have passed since Trump returned to the presidential office. While he continues to achieve his apparently racist agenda which targets anyone who is low -income, disabled, queer or non -white, university campuses which are supposed to be refuge to learn and connect with new ideas, are now filled with fear and suspense.
Questions to consider:
1. Why are a growing number of university students in the United States afraid to express themselves?
2. Why do you think the author believes that she does not have the same protections as an American citizen as someone who is white?
3. Do you think that people who want to study in another country should be able to do it?
