As President Donald Trump begins his second term pledging mass deportations of undocumented residents, some California's colleges and universities have been holding workshops and partnering with legal service nonprofits to help undocumented students on their campuses stay in school.
CalMatters reports this is the case across the University of California and California State University systems, as well as at many California community college campuses.
The children of undocumented residents are referred to as “dreamers,” under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. Dream resource centers support the state's estimated 100,000 undocumented students and students from mixed-status families.
These centers assist students with filling out financial aid forms, referrals to nonprofit immigration law firms, access to mental health support, and provide spaces to bond, do schoolwork or take a break.
Several Dream center coordinators and their nonprofit legal partners said they have seen unprecedented demand for legal services from undocumented college students since Trump's election victory in November.
Legal service providers say their free consultations are booked for several months with students seeking to understand the level of risk of deportation faced by them and their families.
Since 2019, the state has allocated money to support the immigration legal service providers that partner with public colleges and universities, doling out about three million dollars to the University of California, 42 million dollars for the California State University and 50 million dollars for the California community colleges.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed 2025-26 state budget includes an allocation of almost 18 million dollars to immigration legal services for public higher education institutions, along with more than 11-and-half million dollars for Dream resource liaisons.
