LETTER TO THE EDITOR BY WILLOW CUNNINGHAM
On March 8, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took the former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from his eight-months pregnant wife. They did not provide a warrant or read him his rights, and claimed that his visa had been revoked. At the time, Khalil was a lawful, permanent resident with a green card. Now, the future of his family hangs in the balance.
On March 25, Rümeysa Öztürk of Tufts University was snatched off the street by six plainclothed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. I’ve watched the video a bystander took, and it’s indistinguishable from a kidnapping. In just over a minute, she was surrounded by masked men, cuffed and loaded into an unmarked SUV. In both cases, the justification for these detentions were that they had exercised their right to free speech by criticizing the state of Israel for committing human rights violations.
Other international students who have engaged in pro-Palestine activism have chosen to flee the country out of well reasoned concern that ICE will come after them, too. This, combined with a statement by the acting director of ICE on April 8th saying that “We need to get better at treating this like a business” and that deportations should be “like Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery” paints a chilling picture. The disregard for civil and human rights on display displayed through these actions begs the question: Is the University of Maine prepared to ensure the safety of its international students, faculty, and staff?
To my knowledge, the sum total of our university administration’s communications and stated policy on ICE amounts to an email sent out on January 29 titled “Update on Administration Executive Orders.” The email does not provide a script for faculty and staff to follow in the event that they are approached by ICE about a student, is overly permissive to ICE by excluding classrooms and locker rooms from the list of nonpublic spaces, and fails to clarify the difference between an administrative and judicial warrant. Most worryingly though, in the short paragraph on campus access the following sentence is included:
“Per a longstanding university practice, non-university law enforcement officials, including those of immigration agencies, generally are not allowed to access restricted spaces without a warrant or being accompanied by authorized university personnel.”.
A key here is the qualifier that ICE can be let into nonpublic spaces freely if authorized university personnel choose to allow it. This is factual information, and important for the campus community to know. What is lacking is a commitment that no authorized university personnel will voluntarily hand their students over to ICE.
If ICE contacts the university requesting access to a lab without a judicial warrant, will my international colleagues find themselves suddenly detained by an ICE agent that was escorted right to them by a UMPD officer? If the DHS takes issue with the political opinions of someone in my dorm hall, will I one day be recording while a dormmate is dragged away by an agent thatwas politely waved in by a Student Life staff member, in the vain hope that the footage might help them win a lawsuit?
In the event that our university has to make the choice between handing its members over to ICE, or upholding the rights of its international students and faculty to the furthest extent permissible by law, what will it choose?
We cannot afford to wonder. Unless UMaine explicitly commits to a policy of noncompliance with ICE, in the current political environment it simply cannot be trusted to stand up for its students. Therefore, I call on the UMaine system to clarify its policy on ICE, and to prepare itself for the eventuality that students at our university will be targeted just like Öztürk and Khalil have been.
