This week in 1798, John Adams passed the Naturalization Act, the first of four laws collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws were highly controversial in their time and remain so today; all but one was struck down within four years, but echoes of their intended policies ring through to our current, rapidly-escalating national immigration and sanctuary crisis. With the recent announcement of internment camps for unescorted immigrant children, disproportionately, and perhaps illegally, brutal separation of asylum-seeking families at the border, deportations of lifelong Americans brought into the country as very young children, and the rapid mainstreaming of ethnonationalistic ideals around the country, the legacy of one of America's earliest attempts at harsh punitive measures for people the state declines to recognize as citizens is strikingly relevant, 216 years after much of it was ostensibly repealed.

In 2016, the IAS hosted a discussion between Professor Linus Chan (Center for New Americans, University of Minnesota Law School) and Professor Virgil Wiebe (University of St. Thomas School of Law) on the rights of undocumented students, employees, and other campus citizens. What are the rights of undocumented people on campus? What is a sanctuary campus? What is a sanctuary city? What does it mean that Minneapolis is a sanctuary city? What can local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do on and off campus? The answers to some of these questions have changed during the turbulent intervening years, and not for the better. 

For more information on the law, how it is being misapplied, and to learn about efforts to assist those being illegally detained, please click here.