BUZZ
This past Tuesday, a coalition of progressive student groups from Rutgers University took to the streets to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, and to present school officials with a list of demands.
According to The Daily Targum, the People Power Coalition — which includes Students for Justice in Palestine, the Young Democratic Socialists of America Rutgers chapter and the Climate Revolution Action Network — previously had presented Rutgers officials with a set of 14 demands which it said “must” be addressed by September 1.
But administrators “failed to meet or agree to” that deadline.
The coalition’s demands include making it “official policy” that campus police will not cooperate with ICE, “continued support” for “cultural centers for vulnerable communities,” and an official statement that Rutgers will “affirm” protection of “undocumented, immigrant, and international students, transgender students, and students of color.”
In addition, PPC representative Brea Yumiguano, who identifies as non-binary, “intended” to have a meeting with Rutgers Executive Vice President and General Counsel William Castner regarding making the school a “sanctuary campus,” but his staff reportedly “delayed” and then cancelled it.
In a statement posted to Instagram, the PPC accused Rutgers of canceling the meeting (and “blocking” entrance to the building) out of “retaliation.”
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“For 7 months the People Power Coalition has been fighting for a sanctuary campus,” the statement reads. “Going to various meetings with administrators and decision makers. They did this in order to protect students, community members, families in New Brunswick.”
Yumiguano said “I want to live in a city where I’m not afraid of waking up to the horrible call that my parents have been arrested for the crime of going to work. Am I supposed to feel protected by a university that refuses to say anything about the students who have already been kidnapped?”
Holden Saluti, communications manager for Rutgers’ Young Democratic Socialists of America, told those protesting to “get real loud [and] make them know that we are not going to sit around and be passed back and forth and through this administrative limbo because we care.”
“If you want to ice us out, we’re going to turn up the heat,” he added.
Another protest speaker was Gabriela Soto, wife of Martin Soto who was “abducted” and “imprisoned” by ICE in February. In a GoFundMe started that month, Soto wrote that Martin “is a good man […] is responsible and he’s a good person [and] has a big heart.”
The Daily Targum doesn’t note Martin came to the U.S. illegally in 2024 and his detention by ICE followed his arrest for a domestic violence charge.
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