BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- University of Minnesota faculty expressed outrage over a Border Patrol jobs webinar advertised on the school's Career Services website, with some calling it a violation of the university's values towards student safety and immigrant rights.
- Amelia Montes, head of Chicano and Latino Studies, and other faculty members criticized the event for promoting roles associated with increased deportations and alleged human rights abuses.
- The incident drew comparisons to a past CIA recruitment event on campus and highlighted a lack of support from university administration for immigrant students when dealing with ICE-related protocols.
Several University of Minnesota academics reported being “outraged” by an advertisement for a Border Patrol jobs webinar that was hosted — briefly — on the school’s Career Services website.
The head the Chicano and Latino Studies Department, Amelia Montes, reported being “nauseated” after seeing the ad.
“Such a recruitment (inviting our own students to become Border Patrol Agents) is directly connected to the parallel increase in deportations and vagrant human rights abuses,” Montes said according to The Minnesota Daily. (Article author Isabella Wheeldon did not respond to a Fix query about whether Montes meant “vagrant” or “flagrant.”)
Career Services ended up taking down the advertisement before the (virtual) event took place on September 3.
The webinar “aimed to recruit members of the public for roles in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol,” and was “credited” to the career services platform Handshake, not the university itself.
This did not dissuade other faculty from expressing their displeasure.
Michael Gallope, who considers himself an “expert in philosophies, theories, and histories of the struggles against social inequality,” said “It seems impossible to uphold the values of a safe and welcoming environment for international students and students of first-generation migrants while also recruiting students to serve as border patrol agents.”
Gallope (pictured) added that the webinar reminded him of when the CIA held a recruitment on campus in the mid-80s, which resulted in a student occupation of a campus building.
Jimmy Patiño, director of the UMN’s Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender and Sexuality Studies who “seeks to critically excavate alternative imaginings of democratic practice among aggrieved communities in the midst of global capitalism,” said the university was sending mixed messages to students.
“An action like this reveals that on the one hand, you’re sharing resources and rhetoric that you support immigrant students. On the other hand, you’re basically inviting ICE on campus to discuss through career services,” Patiño said.
Patiño said his department spearheaded the majority of ICE protocol procedures in communications with University legal services, where Patiño said he saw little support from administrators. He said the University’s response to the work done was often limited to little more than sharing available student resources.
“We do not get explicit support from the higher echelons of the University leadership,” Patiño said. “In the spring, we had to detail to our faculty in RIDGS on what the procedures would be if ICE were on campus.”
Montes said the webinar was a part of a bigger picture of tearing families apart.
“I am ashamed and shocked that this is happening in our name,” Montes said. “What this is doing is, this program is helping individuals ruin people’s lives.”
The webinar was briefly interrupted during the question session when an attendee exclaimed “You all should be ashamed of yourselves. What you are doing at the border is terrible.”
After the attendee’s mic was muted, supportive chat comments rolled in, with one exclaiming “Thank you for muting the libtard!” A commenter to the Daily piece criticized the “disrespectful” term “libtard,” noting the attendee’s remarks were just “speaking the truth.”
