Carimer Andujar, a prominent student activist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is under threat of deportation — but the response from faculty and students in her defense was immediate.
On just 10 hours’ notice, more than 150 students and professors crammed into the Rutgers faculty union office on April 25 to plan how they would defend their friend and comrade.
Faced with the possibility of detention and even deportation at a mandatory interview with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer May 9, Carimer chose to go public with her case.
Though Carimer has dutifully filed all paperwork to renew her Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, it has now expired, leaving her even more vulnerable. Especially now, after another DACA student was deported, every knock at the door can be an anxiety-filled experience.
Carimer came to the US from the Dominican Republic with her family at the age of 4. As she puts it, “No one can tell me that this is not my home and that I don’t belong here.”
The overwhelming solidarity at Rutgers from members of United Students against Sweatshops, Students for Justice in Palestine, the University Senate, the Muslim Student Association and many others isn’t surprising.
Days after Trump was elected president in November, when more than 2,000 students and faculty at Rutgers University walked out of class to demand the school become a sanctuary campus, Carimer was among those leading the largest protest the campus had experienced in decades.
Two months after the walkout for sanctuary, Carimer stood alongside Arab and Muslim students and professors at another mass rally and march, demanding “No ban. No wall.” And Carimer is a familiar face at the faculty union, the AAUP-AFT, where she participates in social and economic justice organizing with the students, staff and faculty of the Rutgers One coalition.
As president of UndocuRutgers, which represents more than 400 undocumented Rutgers students, Carimer is an…