FIU Students Protest ICE Deal as 4 Campus Officers Gain Deportation Powers
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 19
FIU Students Protest ICE Deal as 4 Campus Officers Gain Deportation Powers
3 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 19
Summary
A few dozen Florida International University students interrupted President Jeanette Nuñez at a campus event, unveiling “ICE off FIU” shirts to protest a 2025 agreement deputizing four campus police officers as ICE agents.
The 287(g) deal, approved after pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration, lets trained officers question and detain people they suspect are in the country illegally, though FIU says only two of 50 officers were trained last year.
No FIU students have been detained on immigration charges by campus police since the agreement took effect in July 2025, but protesters said the policy chilled campus life and left undocumented students fearing routine encounters with officers.
The fallout has spread beyond demonstrations: donor Mike Fernandez withdrew a $1 million gift, TheDream.US ended support for more than 180 undocumented students at FIU, and many of those students transferred out.
At a university where 55,000 students include more Hispanic graduates than any U.S. school, the ICE partnership has become a broader fight over whether FIU is yielding its immigrant identity to Trump-era enforcement priorities.