A forum was held at Northwestern’s Multicultural Center, 1936 Sheridan Rd., to discuss NU’s immigration policy on Monday in the wake of University Police’s decision to refer Ramiro Sanchez-Zepeda to immigration authorities after his arrest for drunk driving last week. The forum, sponsored by Northwestern Community Development Corps, was held in advance of a planned demonstration scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Thursday at the Arch to advocate reform in NU’s immigration policies.

According to Adam Yalowitz, co-chair of Northwestern Community Development Corps’s Undergraduate Lecture Series on Race, Poverty and Inequality and one of the event’s organizers, the demonstration was initially scheduled for Monday, but was postponed to allow more campus organizations to add their support. Alianza and the College Democrats are currently supporters. Yalowitz said the Monday meeting also allowed the group to draft a statement outlining the protest’s goals and provide attendees with a clearer sense of current Evanston and University policy.

Yalowitz said all 37 students present at Monday’s meeting agreed to the statement, which calls for the NUPD to adopt a “nondiscrimination” policy similar to Evanston, which has an informal policy discouraging the police force from referring illegal immigrants to immigration authorities.

“We don’t want our endowment or our tuition to enforce broken federal policy,” the Weinberg sophomore said. “Every year the university spends a lot of money trying to attract minority students, but it’s policies like these that keep a lot of people away.”

The idea of the Arch protest stemmed from students’ participation in Friday’s march in Chicago for expanded rights for immigrants, Yalowitz said.

“A lot of people were at the May Day march downtown, and people wanted to do something similar,” he said.