In response to student protests and indignation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided to withdraw from the University of Maryland’s future career fair.
One day after the Student Government Association unanimously approved a bill requiring the school to “retrace its offer” due to concerns that” current federal actions and police work” may infringe on the protection of illegal students, employees, and their families, ICE disappeared from the roster of recruiters for the Feb. 27-28 function, according to the Washington Times.
” We believe all students regardless of immigration status does feel safe and protected in their residences, rooms and kitchen rooms”, scholar Louis Mancuso, the scholar government’s communications director, told the Times. We are not attempting to assist or unlawfully people, but we want to prevent people from attending the profession fair because ICE could account and arrest them.
The student government bill, according to the student newspaper The Diamondback, stated that it would “refuse voluntary reporting of any student information such as immigration status and restricting ICE officers ‘ access to non-public school places.”
Multiple student organizations affiliated with the UMD coalition’s Anti-Imperialist Movement posted flyers around campus on Sunday and urged the university to halt the organization from the spring fair and all subsequent career fairs.
Students ‘ organizations like the University of Pennsylvania’s Political Latinxes United for Movement and Action in Society, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the UMD Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines supported the petition, which asserted that ICE’s presence at the career fair would compromise both the safety of the attendees and the students.
Administrators told the student newspaper that the organization’s decision to back away from the fair was not influenced by the outcry over ICE’s involvement there. Additionally, university spokesman Rebecca Aloisi stated in an email to the Washington Times that “ICE has decided to cancel their registration and participate in the Spring Career and Internship Fair.”
ICE has previously sparked controversy on campus. Leftist student organizations at Duke University earlier this month criticized ICE recruiters at a job fair there as a” societal attack against our humanity.”
Also this month, Loyola University-Chicago students were thrown into a panic as rumors spread that an ICE agent was on campus, the College Fix reported. In actuality, it was a Census Bureau worker.
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