For Georgetown Alumni, a Fellow Graduate’s Defense of Child Separation Touches a Nerve

Georgetown University was Andrea Guerrero’s American dream.

Guerrero, a 2015 Georgetown alumna, crossed the southern border when she was 8 years old. She remembers being small enough to crawl beneath the barbed-wire fence, instead of climbing over as the adults did. She remembers wearing pink-and-yellow overalls, a gift from her aunt that she would have to leave behind after getting soaked in the Rio Grande. She remembers her mother clinging to the side of the boat because there wasn’t enough room for everyone inside.

“I remember lots of little snapshots like that, which, just reflecting back on, are probably really terrifying moments that my mom went through, but for me, having that innocence and having that person to comfort me through it all was what made the situation bearable,” Guerrero said.

When she grew up, Guerrero fell under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, and received a full ride to Georgetown University. Now, she said, she feels grateful to Georgetown. She said the institution made success in the United States possible for her.

The thing that is special about Georgetown University, said Christian Arana, a 2010 alumnus, is its Jesuit mission for serving others.

Arana said his Georgetown education — and his fundamental belief in the importance of compassion in leadership — is what made him so vehemently oppose the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy. Then, when he learned from her Twitter bio that Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of homeland security, also attended Georgetown, he was floored.

“The university kind of engraves on its students since Day 1 when you step on the campus,” he said. “How we can help the least among us, the people who are marginalized. And I would have figured that someone like Secretary Nielsen, who graduated from the same school that I did, would understand that. And here she is, defending a policy that is completely contrary to what we learned at Georgetown.”

Arana consulted with some of his friends and fellow alumni, including Guerrero. He quickly drafted a petition and posted it on Change.org, calling on Nielsen to immediately resign from the Department of Homeland Security.

“At Georgetown, we were taught the Jesuit value of men and women for others. It is an idea rooted in love, justice, and concern for the least among us, and which led many of us to pursue careers in public service,” the petition reads. “That is why the horrific family separations occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border require us as Georgetown alumni to call on our fellow alumna — Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen (SFS ’94) — to resign as head of the agency that has inflicted so much harm on children and families at the border.”

The petition has gained more than 1,400 signatures, from several generations of Georgetown alumni.

“It’s just a common thread that this woman does not represent the education that we got at the university,” Arana said. “Secretary Nielsen is not going to resign because a thousand Georgetown alumni told her to step down. But the point is that she cannot go out in society and claim her Georgetown identity, when what she is doing with the president at the border goes completely contrary.”

This isn’t the first instance of an alumni network speaking out against one of its own. Some of Harvard University’s Class of 2003 used its 15th reunion, in May, as a platform to condemn Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the president. Additionally, alumni of the University of Virginia School of Law, which Nielsen attended for her law degree, also wrote a letter. That one was addressed directly to Nielsen, asking that she reconsider her support for zero tolerance.

Arana said Georgetown’s alumni network is well connected on social media, and it didn’t take America’s immigration crisis to bring the group together. Sharing the petition on Facebook and Twitter is what got the attention of so many alumni, he said. Since many end up working in positions of leadership, Arana said, Georgetown alumni rely on one another to be active and make changes in communities.

“There is something common among all of our education at Georgetown, over the fact that we were a university literally hell-bent on serving other people,” he said. “What good was our education if we were not going to use it in the service of others?”

Colleges are, in many ways, dependent on their alumni, said Gregory Fansler, director of alumni relations at Virginia Tech and president of the Council of Alumni Marketing and Membership Professionals, an organization dedicated to the development of such officials.

Fansler said institutions rely on alumni for donations and for a number of “qualitative” additions to the university, like teaching classes or mentoring current students. It is the responsibility of the university to facilitate connections among alumni and between alumni and the institution — to make sure “their relationship with the university wasn’t just a transactional experience.”

But when a member of the alumni community is at the center of controversy, colleges are placed in a difficult position, said Fansler. They are not able to take sides.

“Alumni relations is designed to serve every alum,” he said. “No matter who they are.”

Fansler said the only thing for a university to do is remain neutral and encourage healthy communication during conflict.

“Debate, discussion, and compromise are all foundational attributes of a nourishing university experience,” he said. “And these attributes help produce a healthy democracy with an increasing population that can interact with people who are different from themselves.”

Georgetown has not issued a statement against the zero-tolerance policy or Nielsen, though other Jesuit Catholic universities, like Loyola University New Orleans and Boston College, have. In a written statement, Georgetown did call for bipartisan immigration legislation.

“Georgetown has been deeply engaged in advocating for bipartisan legislation that prevents family separation and provides a permanent fix for Dreamers,” as beneficiaries of the DACA program are known, the statement said.

Guerrero said that’s why Georgetown alumni have taken the condemnation into their own hands. It doesn’t make sense to her that the institution remains quiet on something like this. Since the petition became popular, she also wrote an opinion piece in Georgetown’s student newspaper, The Hoya, bringing the argument to current students.

For Guerrero, Georgetown will always be a special place, and she feels bound to protect its image from an alumna she feels does not represent its mission.

“Part of the reason why I was brought here, to the United States, was for a better life. To pursue the American dream,” Guerrero said. “By going to Georgetown, I’ve been able to achieve that dream.”