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Student petition signed by 1,200 calls ICE ‘fascist organization’
George Washington University Law School refused to disinvite U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from its career fair Friday after over 1,200 students and organizations signed a petition to have the federal agency removed.
The petition called on GW Law and the Georgetown University Law Center to remove ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from “all current components and future renditions” of the law schools’ joint event.
“ICE is a fascist organization, tasked with carrying out ethnic cleansing, family separation, and extreme brutality and violence,” the petition states.
It also states that “The government created ICE only 23 years ago to violently remove people from the United States, violating the human rights of immigrant communities and obfuscating the fact that the United States is a country stolen from Indigenous communities and built by enslaving Black people.”
The students added that “Working for DHS or ICE is antithetical to what it means to be a lawyer serving the public interest.”
Further, they stated that other law schools, such as New York University and American University’s Washington College of Law, have blocked “recruitment efforts” by DHS and ICE.
“We remain adamant that regardless of immigration status, ICE’s actions grossly violate human rights, and we stand with immigrant communities everywhere in the fight against state violence,” the petition states.
Dean Dayna Matthew met with the students who spearheaded the petition to discuss their concerns, and later sent an email stating the GW Law administrators decided not to rescind ICE’s invitation, The GW Hatchet reported.
The dean cited free expression and university policy.
The university is “committed to principles that protect all students’ right to ideological expression,” she stated.
Matthew added that recruitment programs must remain open to all employers, even if some view their actions as objectionable.
“In my view, providing PSRP access to an employer does not signal endorsement or support of that employer’s work or values,” Matthew stated.
“My decision does support and endorse GW Law students’ right to express opposition to an employer consistent with the university’s freedom of expression policy,” she stated.
After administrators declined to remove ICE, at least 20 employers pulled out of the career fair.
However, the petition did have some impact. ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor withdrew from the event while the agency’s Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center remained involved.
Still, students were disappointed.
“To bring an organization whose sole mission is to divide people, make people feel unwelcome, remove people from spaces and create a sense of unsafety and unrest into that space — a space that so many people in this community have worked so hard to curate — was very insulting to the people who have tried to make this such a welcoming place,” said student Anapaula Pérez-Gaitan, who is the program manager at the school’s public interest center.
Last week, ICE withdrew from participating in an Arizona State University Law School event following a student-led petition, The College Fix reported.
ICE had planned to host a table at the Government and Public Interest Table Talks event until 650 people signed a petition to protest the federal law enforcement agency’s participation.
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