University administration has dozens of unauthorized flyers removed
By Leslie Layton | Posted May 6, 2025
The flyer that appeared on classroom doors last week
This story was updated at 4 p.m. today to include the university’s response.
Three hundred flyers suddenly appeared on campus doors at Chico State University last week, warning that law enforcement officers – a reference to immigration agents — would only be allowed in classrooms and other “private spaces” if they possessed judicial warrants.
“CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION” warns a flyer banner highlighted in yelllow. The flyer then notes that a classroom is a “private space” with entry restricted to faculty, staff and enrolled students. “Law enforcement may only enter with a valid judicial warrant … Everyone in the United States, regardless of immigration status, has the right to remain silent,” it continues.read more
ImmSchools: Public schools can create a safe environment
By Carina Merrick | Posted February 12, 2025
photo by Julian Mendoza
Kassandra Ramondo (left) and Lizette Pilar
Hundreds of people gathered on Chico State’s campus Feb. 5 for a peaceful march in what was one of several recent local protests advocating for immigrant rights.
“I think it’s super important that people understand and know that immigrants do make the backbone of our country,” said Lizette Pilar, program coordinator at Chico State’s Gender & Sexuality Equity Coalition. “Especially in agriculture, a lot of our pickers are illegal immigrants or undocumented.”
Efforts are underway across the state — including passage of new laws, street protests and information sessions — to push back against the Trump Administration’s most extreme immigration measures. Downtown Los Angeles has had multiple protests including one that blocked U.S. 101 for hours. Ethnic Media Services (EMS), a a nonprofit news and communications agency, held a know-your-rights training Feb. 7 for media organizations.read more
After Border Patrol raids, town of Poplar comes to a standstill
By Carina Merrick | Posted January 18, 2025
photo by Manuel Ortiz
Mari Pérez Ruíz of Community Valley Empowerment Alliance discusses the recent raids with a community of indigenous farmworkers in Tulare County.
POPLAR, Ca. -– In the early 1970s, this unincorporated town in California’s agricultural heartland was designated by county officials as having “no authentic future.” That designation—entailing dramatic cuts to basic services remained until as recently as 2023.
Now, following a series of raids on immigrants that began on Jan. 7 in neighboring Kern County, residents here say the future does indeed look bleak.
“People are scared. They don’t want to come out. We’re all scared,” says Gregorio, a resident of Poplar for the past seven years and the owner of a local business that caters to the community’s farmworker population. (We are not using Gregorio’s last name to protect his identity.)read more
A film on the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, produced by immigration crackdowns over the past couple of decades, will be shown in a free KIXE PBS film screening at 6 p.m. Jan. 20.
Readers can register here to gain access, watch “Missing in Brooks County” at home, and also participate in an online community conversation afterward that will feature several local panelists, including ChicoSol Editor Leslie Layton, who has covered immigration from the Mexican side of the border.
The film tells the moving story of Eddie Canales, who has assumed an unofficial role as a human rights detective assisting families hunting for missing loved ones in the punishing landscape of Brooks County in south Texas.read more
Trump steps up assault on immigration and immigrant communities
By Carina Merrick | Posted August 12, 2020
photo by Leslie Layton
Demonstrator at a Women’s March several years ago calling for immigrant rights.
The Trump administration has made 400 policy changes detrimental to immigrants through its tenure at the White House, with 63 fresh blows meted out amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in a report released July 31.
“Many of the changes reflect the administration’s really strong knowledge of immigration law and regulations, and their willingness to enforce things that have been on the books for years, but have never been implemented,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at MPI, who co-authored the report with MPI Associate Policy Analyst Jessica Bolter.read more
Migrant management strategies are a tool, not a solution
By Carina Merrick | Posted March 29, 2020
photo by Leslie Layton
Migrants in crowded shelters on the Mexican side of the border who are pursuing asylum in the United States may be stuck there indefinitely.
The United States has implemented travel restrictions on an unprecedented scale in recent weeks that immigration experts say are riddled with loopholes and devised in a way that puts vulnerable populations at risk.
This is especially true at the U.S.-Mexican border, they said, where tens of thousands of migrants living in shelters in northern Mexico now have a very slim, if any, chance of pursuing their asylum cases in U.S. immigration courts.
The Trump Administration recently closed the border to nonessential traffic, and in the process invoked a little-known health code to effectively bring asylum petitions to a standstill, said Alex Aleinikoff, director of the Zolbert Institute on Migration and Mobility and a former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.read more
