The American Association of University Professor (AAUP) chapters at Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane University declare our support for the international and immigrant students, faculty, and staff, and their families at our universities and by extension the larger immigrant community of the greater New Orleans metropolitan area. The recent aggressive dispersal of federal immigration agents into and across our city and its neighboring communities has stoked fear, uncertainty, hardship, and distress in the lives of many.
As AAUP faculty, we are compelled to call attention to these hardships and express concern for the members of our communities directly impacted by the federal deployment. These operations, the tactics deployed by agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the harsh treatment of our city’s immigrant community undermine the preservation of universal human rights.
The Loyola AAUP chapter is dedicated to Catholic, Jesuit values, which assert that “every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance” (Caritas in Veritate, 62).
The Tulane AAUP chapter is dedicated to Tulane’s mission to foster equitable communities and uphold the dignity and rights of all people. The safety and well-being of immigrant and international students, faculty, and staff are essential to our academic community. Protecting the rights of immigrants is inseparable from our responsibility to promote justice, support vulnerable populations, and ensure that every member of our community can learn and work without fear.
The Loyola and Tulane AAUP chapters also recognize the critical role that immigrants have long played in the history of New Orleans. For centuries, our city has been a destination for people from different places. Immigrants have helped fashion our city’s unique cultural identity, created businesses and institutions, built families and homes, and worked to restore our community in the aftermath of devastating natural disasters. Especially important in this regard are the efforts of immigrants from Honduras, Mexico, and other countries from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean who aided in rebuilding the city in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
We urge federal, state, and city officials to use restraint as federal immigration agents operate in our city, and we call on the larger Loyola and Tulane communities to explore meaningful and tangible avenues to support the students, faculty, and staff whose families, homes, livelihoods, and safety are being threatened by current federal actions. Most importantly, we want the entire Loyola, Tulane, and New Orleans communities to know: you belong here, you are valued, and you are loved.
