Detained and Deported: What rights do international students have?
Experience and expertise on how to best care for non-citizens in these perilous times.
Friends! Rumeysa Ozturk is headed home today. We celebrate her release and rejoice with her friends, family and Tufts University community that she is no longer in ICE custody. We also lament the many who still languish unjustly in Louisiana, Texas, Miami, El Salvador and the other places of confinement and well-documented cruelty. Lord have mercy.
We are breaking format today because InterVarsity’s Political Discipleship Team alongside many generous partners produced an informative, clear and concise webinar with an abundance of resources that I want to make available to the broadest audience possible.
BIG PICTURE
For some of you reading this message, you or your community might still be wrestling with IF you should even be engaging with faith and politics. For followers of Jesus, faithful to scripture and His teachings, the answer is a resounding YES.
God's Good News About Politics is where you will find bible studies, prayer guides and leadership team trainings to ground you and your community in deeply Christian values, not our own whims, wounds or cultural narratives.
To put that robust faith into action on behalf of non-citizens in the United States, the team featured three lawyers and two ministers who combined experience and expertise to share with us clear and informative ways on how to best care of our non-citizen neighbors.
Here is the RECAP of the presentation. This includes the video file, audio file, and chat. The Q&A log is also here. There were three resources that were shared by our panelists that I would like to highlight:
Immigration attorney, Jacob Foor gave a stellar Know Your Rights Presentation that was clear, contextualized and comprehensive. Here is the Powerpoint.
A human rights attorney provided two wonderful pamphlets that gave great tips for preparing for an international trip. Traveling While ____ answered questions like, What do you need to do before you travel? What if you get stopped? What rights do you have? All of these questions and more are answered there. They also shared this Preparing for International Travel handout that gave steps for digital hygiene that can help you avoid situations with Customs and Border enforcement.
Both of these travel resources can be printed out and given to vulnerable people and those concerned about travel across borders and any place where documents may be asked for.
Lastly, InterVarsity staff Katie Kim and Andrew Berg, gave profound pastoral words that I hope ground everyone who is concerned for our non-citizen neighbors especially students willing and able to protest genocide against Palestinians. God is not asking you to help everyone, but He is calling all of us to help someone. Would you make your heart, head, hands and maybe your home, open to loving our neighbors well in this season.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am here to serve, desire to be a good partner, and am grateful for the opportunity to leverage all that I have to love God, our neighbors and creation well.
In Christ and for His Glory,
– jonathan
