His parents fought to stay in the U.S. Now he’s graduating from Columbia University.

His parents were his inspiration, says Clive Thompson Jr.

He watched them fight to stay in this country after fleeing death threats in Jamaica, including a desperate bid to avoid deportation that saw the couple live more than two years in a church sanctuary in Philadelphia.

“No matter what I’m faced with,” said Thompson, 25, “I think if my parents were able to face that, I can do it.”

His parents’ determination fueled his own. And on Monday, Thompson will accomplish a grand personal challenge, graduating from Columbia University with a degree in film and media studies. His parents, now legal permanent U.S. residents, will travel from their home in Northeast Philadelphia to the ceremony in New York, along with three of Thompson’s siblings.

The Ivy League is a long way from tiny Cedarville, in far South Jersey, and from the late-night job Thompson worked in a meatball factory to help save the family home while his parents sheltered inside a church.

“All that he was going through, his sadness, his loneliness, drove him to do this, with the help of others,” said his mother, Oneita Thompson.

Her husband, Clive Sr., credits his son’s drive, strength, and faith.

“He said, ‘I want to make everybody proud,’ including himself,” said Clive Sr.

The younger Thompson, known to friends as C.J., wants to become a film director. He’s working on a script for a short film about his family’s time in sanctuary, and has started interviewing for jobs in the entertainment industry.

He intends to go to graduate school. That’s not easy for immigrants such as Thompson, among the 600,000 young people living in the United States under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It provides work permits and deferments from deportation for those brought to the county as children by undocumented parents, but offers no legal status or path to citizenship.

DACA recipients can attend American universities only if they can somehow afford it, because most states, like the federal government, offer no financial aid programs for them.

Thompson worked different jobs to pay for college, and also got important financial help from a sister, through scholarships, church donations, private loans, and a Go Fund Me effort. At Columbia, he earned departmental honors and made the dean’s list.

The Rev. Katie Aikins met Clive Jr. when his parents moved into sanctuary at her Tabernacle United Church in University City. She said she’s not surprised by his success, knowing he was resolved to secure an education.

“His ambition and eagerness to get in, and to be a student there — I remember how much of a passion he had,” she said.

The Thompsons fled Jamaica in 2004, when Clive Jr. was a boy, after gang members burned their farm and threatened to kill them. The U.S. government denied them asylum, but for 14 years allowed them to stay and build a life, holding jobs, paying taxes, buying a house, and raising seven children.

Clive was a heavy-equipment operator at Bridgeton-based Cumberland Dairy, while Oneita, a certified nursing assistant, worked at Friends Village retirement home in Woodstown.

When the Trump administration was elected, it put the Thompsons on a fast track to removal from the U.S.

In 2018, Oneita, Clive, and their two youngest American-citizen children, Christine, then 18, and Timothy, then 14, took sanctuary in the First United Methodist Church of Germantown. After two years, relations with the church grew strained, and in 2020 the family moved into Tabernacle Church.

The goal of sanctuary is to buy time, for legal cases to go forward, for advocates to generate pressure, for elections to change the direction of government. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy dissuades agents from making arrests in churches, so they’re considered safe places for immigrants.

Clive Jr. was protected by DACA. But he lived largely alone in their Cedarville house, and he worried constantly about his parents, while they, confined within church walls, worried about him and his siblings.

In December 2020, the federal government dropped its deportation case, and Clive and Oneita Thompson joyfully danced from the church to greet a crowd of supporters, ending 843 days in sanctuary.

The hardest part, Oneita said, was never knowing whether government-ordered removal would separate her and her husband from their children, all of whom are citizens or live legally in the United States.

Today, Clive Sr. works at the Urban Resources Development Corp., known as URDC, which rehabilitates homes for seniors and low-income families. He’s also working toward his GED. Oneita has a job doing billing and coding, and has returned to nursing school to further her education.

“It’s amazing to have parents that support you,” Clive Jr. said, “but it is even more amazing to have parents that lead by example.”

He saw them battle for their place in this country, knowing all that awaited them in Jamaica were graves.

He’s grateful, he said, for the work and care of the professors, friends, mentors and supporters who helped him achieve, who helped him earn a major-college degree.

“I don’t think it’s hit me yet,” Thompson said. “Not that it’s unimaginable, but it’s a little surreal. It’s everything I dreamed of.”

He’s concerned about the future of DACA, which remains in limbo, and what that will mean for him and thousands of other young people. Last year, a federal appeals court ruled the program unlawful, but let it remain in operation as the case goes through the courts.

It’s important, Thompson said, that a permanent solution be found, one that allows him and other DACA recipients to become citizens and continue to contribute.

“I hope my story can be a vessel of hope for anyone out there who is questioning their dreams,” he said. “If I have a setback, I get back up and try to move forward.”