Grad Union Asks Harvard To Fund Noncitizens’ Legal Expenses, Limit ICE Agents’ Entry to Campus

Harvard’s graduate student union requested that the University fully fund legal counsel for international workers facing visa revocations and restrict immigration enforcement agents’ access to campus spaces in a contract proposal presented on Thursday.

The proposal, introduced during a heated bargaining session with the University, asks Harvard to fund legal counsel for “immigration emergencies” — including Student and Exchange Visitor Information System changes and other visa revocations — and “arbitrary or unconstitutional detention.”

It was presented hours before a federal judge blocked United States President Donald Trump’s proclamation banning foreign students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.

Bargaining committee member Denish K. Jaswal estimated that the graduate student union’s 5,500-worker bargaining unit includes at least 2,000 noncitizen workers whose futures remain uncertain as Harvard enters a lengthy legal battle with the Trump administration over foreign student enrollment.

Jaswal said that Harvard does not tell the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers how many noncitizens are members. In total, Harvard employs at least 4,500 international scholars on J and H visas.

The proposal also asks that Harvard prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering non-public spaces on campus unless they have a judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. It asks Harvard to prohibit ICE agents from entering if they only present an administrative warrant or ICE detainer — documents that do not grant the agency authority to enter or search private spaces.

The union’s proposal also asks to increase the union’s noncitizen worker assistance fund — used for non-emergency services, such as travel costs for immigration hearings — from $30,000 to $225,000, increasing each year at the same pace as members’ salaries. It also requests that workers detained or temporarily expelled by immigration authorities receive 150 days of paid administrative leave.

According to a University spokesperson, Harvard has made $2.75 million available to the HGSU-UAW this year, distributed across the union’s funds — including the assistance fund for international workers — at union members’ discretion.

But according to Jaswal, the University’s current funds have fallen short. Much of the $2.75 million is eaten up by other union expenses, including healthcare and childcare funds, Jaswal said. Even after shifting money from the other funds to pay out $170,000 in noncitizen assistance fund disbursements, the union was unable to cover $48,000 in eligible applications in the year ending May 1.

Applications for the union’s assistance fund also ended May 1, weeks before the Trump administration unleashed its latest salvo against international students at Harvard. Since then, union members have accrued an additional $52,000 in uncovered legal and immigration-related fees.

Beside its international worker assistance fund, the union currently has an annual $100,000 fund to cover legal expenses — but it has struggled to access the money in the past, filing a grievance over the issue in 2023. After two years of mediation, the union and the University have not agreed upon a way to reimburse workers from the fund.

According to several bargaining committee members, University officials rejected a union offer to move the currently inaccessible $100,000 to HGSU-UAW’s emergency fund — the only fund still receiving member applications — in exchange for withdrawing the 2023 grievance.

The union has referred members to Harvard Law School’s Harvard Representation Initiative for legal advice. However, HGSU-UAW members say the program has only fully funded legal representation in petitions for habeas corpus.

The HRI did not respond to a request for comment on its legal advice to HGSU-UAW.

“Harvard has an obligation — if it’s going to bring noncitizen, international workers into their workforce, if it’s going to benefit from their work and all of their productive contributions — that they protect those workers,” Jaswal said.

“They need to make sure that their particular personal circumstances are protected and that they have the money in order to afford the legal resources to do so,” she added.

Currently, none of Harvard’s major union contracts cover legal expenses for immigration proceedings or offer leave for detained workers, paid or unpaid. Neither do contracts for graduate workers across the Ivy League, though Brown University also has a similar employee assistance fund of at least $30,000 for students on nonimmigrant visas.

But both Harvard’s non-tenure-track faculty union and its undergraduate workers union, currently negotiating first contracts, have presented noncitizen worker proposals requesting University funds to support international workers.

Harvard Academic Workers-United Auto Workers requested University reimbursement for legal expenses related to immigration processes in a February proposal, but the University struck out the language in its counterproposal the next month. Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union-United Auto Workers, which presented its initial proposal last month, requested paid leave for detained workers.

All three unions’ proposals request that the University require immigration enforcement officials to present judicial warrants and promptly notify affected employees. The University removed both provisions in its March counterproposal to HAW-UAW.

All three proposals also allow both parties to bargain over the article again if changing immigration policies create new requirements for workers, a provision also removed by the University in its counterproposal to HAW-UAW.

HGSU-UAW bargaining committee member Benjamin B. Daniels said that Harvard owes student workers more than the high-profile legal defense it has mounted in federal court.

“Everyone appreciates that Harvard has been defending the institutional rights and the academic freedoms in court, but that is Harvard’s legal apparatus defending Harvard as an institution, and defending Harvard’s money,” Daniels said.

“Viewing noncitizen students as a source of income, as the source of the prestige or capability of the institution, is not viewing protecting them as a distinct human,” he added.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.