An unusual agreement between many Florida universities and federal immigration officials has caused a new wave of anxiety among students, as immigration raids around the country have swept up thousands and ignited protests.
The agreements give university police departments, after training from ICE, authority to conduct immigration enforcement and access to databases to check immigration status. It remains unclear to what extent university police departments have worked with ICE in practice.
On Friday, students at Florida International University, a Miami campus that is majority Hispanic, protested against their school’s decision to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was made in July. The university is one of at least 16 public higher-education institutions around the state that have agreed to join forces with ICE over the last year.
Carlton Daley, a student activist and engineering major, said his university’s embrace of the agreement is concerning given that the institution highlights its international student population — in total, about 4,500 students from more than 140 countries.
“They are perfectly OK and almost eager to be enacting this kind of social harm against our community,” he said.
Florida International’s police chief has said that the university would assist ICE if the agency requested help with an immigration sweep on campus. “That hasn’t happened,” he said at an on-campus meeting.
The partnerships are known as 287(g) agreements, for the section added to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996 that allowed ICE to delegate some immigration enforcement to local law enforcement agencies. Such partnerships have increased rapidly during the second Trump administration, rising to 1,000 agreements, more than a 600 percent increase, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
And, for what appears to be the first time, the list of local authorities cooperating with ICE includes colleges and universities.
Almost all of those schools are in Florida, which has been a leader in implementing conservative policies in higher education, including curbing ideas deemed “woke” by Republicans from core curriculums and cracking down on left-leaning student protests.
Last February, Gov. Ron DeSantis directed Florida law enforcement agencies to work with ICE, saying the new partnerships mean “deportations can be carried out more efficiently, making our communities safer as illegal aliens are removed.”
Now ICE also has agreements with the University of Florida, New College of Florida and University of Central Florida, among others, according to a list on the agency’s website. Several colleges provided copies of their agreements, but otherwise declined to comment.
Amanda Ennis, a spokeswoman for the University of North Florida, said there has been no ICE enforcement activity on campus since it entered its agreement, which she said came after the governor’s directive. “The safety and well-being of every member of our campus community is always a top priority,” she said.
The agreements came under fresh scrutiny from many students and activists this month after federal agents in Minnesota fatally shot two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both American citizens. Their deaths have spurred a political backlash against Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Michael Kagan, the director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said there is a political divide in the use of the agreements on the local level. States and local governments controlled by Democrats are less likely to partner with ICE.
On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, said she would introduce legislation to end 287(g) partnerships in the state, calling ICE a rogue agency.
“There is definitely a blue-red divide,” Mr. Kagan said.
The picture is more complicated on the national level, he said. The Obama administration favored such agreements, the Biden administration pared them back, and now the Trump administration is pressuring local agencies to adopt them.
Mr. Kagan said the rise in cooperation agreements between ICE and college security departments would likely intimidate students. “Even if in the short run it’s not really used in practice, it will certainly scare people and for good reason,” he said.
The Trump administration has said its immigration enforcement operations are focused on seeking out people who have committed crimes. It has also taken other steps to target undocumented students and international students on college campuses, as a part of its broader agenda to curb immigration.
Last year, thousands of students lost their student visa status and several were detained under an effort by Trump officials to scrutinize foreign students studying in the United States. And the Justice Department has sued states that provided in-state tuition to undocumented students, including Virginia and California.
Vimal Patel writes about higher education for The Times with a focus on speech and campus culture.
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