Florida College Faculty Union Urges University to Withdraw From ICE Partnership

At Florida International University (FIU), where more than 60% of students identify as Latinx and many are immigrants or international students, fear is mounting. The university’s decision to enroll in the federal 287(g) immigration enforcement program, a partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has sparked outrage among students, faculty, and community advocates. For Tania Cepero Lopez, a longtime FIU writing professor and president of the university’s faculty union, the decision already has dangerous consequences.

“It’s not a matter of how will [students] be impacted — they’re already impacted,” Lopez said. “I have students who don’t feel safe on campus, who are worried that they’re going to be stopped and detained for something as minor as a traffic ticket, a parking ticket.”

FIU applied for the 287(g) Task Force Model late last year. Under this arrangement, campus police officers could be granted immigration enforcement powers, such as identifying and detaining undocumented individuals during routine policing. According to Lopez, neither faculty nor students were notified before the application was revealed in a Miami Herald article.

“Everything that’s happening is destroying our public service, our community service mission,” Lopez said.

Since then, the United Faculty of Florida-FIU (UFF-FIU) has led a sustained campaign urging the university to withdraw from the program. The faculty union, alongside legal experts and immigrant rights groups, warns that the partnership will erode trust in campus safety, stoke racial profiling, and create a chilling effect on immigrant students’ access to education.

“I’m a naturalized citizen, and I’m concerned because we don’t know what they’re going to do,” Lopez said. “I have faculty members … emailing me, ‘Hey, I’m traveling to my home country. … Just wanted you to have my information, just in case something happens.’ Can you imagine that? And these are people who are citizens.”

Fear and Uncertainty

According to ICE’s website, the Task Force Model of the 287(g) program allows state or local law enforcement officers to perform immigration enforcement functions under ICE supervision during their “routine police duties.” What those functions entail, however, remains murky.

Even FIU’s chief of police, Alexander Casas, who initiated the application, acknowledged in a faculty senate meeting on April 18 at FIU’s campus that he wasn’t fully clear on what the program would involve until he completed federal training. Still, Interim President Jeanette Nuñez deferred entirely to Casas on the decision, stating during the same meeting that she “supports the police in whatever they want to do.”

At the meeting, faculty members and their lawyers outlined the real fear among students and faculty.

“People are afraid to publish, afraid to attend events, afraid to seek help — this is not how a university should function,” said Juan Gomez, director of the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at FIU. “We must send a clear message that FIU is a safe place, where ideas and people are protected.”

Associate Professor Matt Barr, whose wife is a noncitizen who also works full-time at FIU, said he had always felt safe on campus during his 14-year tenure — until recently.

“There’s safety without a strong visible presence, and that has always been the case here,” said Barr. “But I feel that changing a little bit.”

Alana Greer, director of the Community Justice Project, called the university’s participation in the 287(g) program “the most extreme version” of police-ICE collaboration.

“This is deeply unprecedented,” Greer told the audience of faculty, students, and administrators.

She warned that many of the federal government’s administrative immigration databases are riddled with errors, putting lawful residents, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, Temporary Protected Status holders, and even citizens at risk of being wrongfully detained.

Greer recounted a recent case in Tallahassee, where a 20-year-old U.S. citizen was detained under the ICE agreement.

“We spent all day trying to get this young man out of jail,” Greer said, as local officials deferred to ICE even though “everyone in the system” knew he was a citizen.

This kind of bureaucratic handoff, Greer argued, illustrates the dangerous lack of oversight and due process involved in these agreements.

UFF-FIU and the broader faculty senate have passed resolutions opposing the program. But the administration, Lopez said, has remained firm in its position, despite community outcry and growing concern among students, particularly those who are undocumented or on student visas.

The lack of institutional guidance has left faculty scrambling.

“I’m being asked, ‘What do we do if ICE comes to campus? Can they enter classrooms?’ I have no answers because the university hasn’t provided any,” Lopez said. “President Nuñez said, ‘You look at the big picture — 18 students losing their visas is not that much.’ The implication there is that undocumented status is the same as criminal activity, and that narrative has no place at Florida International University.”

The consequences are already visible. According to Lopez, prospective students, many of whom are undocumented or recipients of DACA, are withdrawing their applications out of fear.

“I have a mentee who teaches high school. She told me her students no longer want to apply to FIU,” she said.

Pressure on Local Communities

Two hundred and fifty state agencies in Florida have agreed to the 287(g) program, and there are 43 pending agreements. All 67 counties in the state, including Broward and Miami-Dade, have entered the agreement. Latinx enclaves such as Hialeah and Venezuela, home to large Donald Trump voting blocs, also signed the agreement. Meanwhile, the city of Miami’s agreement has been deferred to June 12, following community pushback.

In an attempt to push back, the city of South Miami has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, becoming the first municipality to legally push back against the state’s pressure campaign to force local police departments into federal immigration enforcement duties. While the state claims the program is mandatory, South Miami argues that it is not legally obligated to join and that the governor is overreaching his authority by threatening local officials who resist.

“Governor DeSantis and Attorney General Uthmeier have in fact threatened to use their enforcement powers against municipalities and municipal officers,” the complaint read, describing a climate of political coercion and intimidation. The city has warned that the pressure to sign on to 287(g) is not just a legal concern, but one that could divert police attention from community safety and put municipalities at risk of lawsuits for civil rights violations.

Meanwhile, the federal government is integrating cooperation with ICE into federal funding reviews.

Community groups such as Latino Outdoors Miami are reevaluating how and where they serve local families. The national nonprofit connects historically underrepresented communities, particularly Latinx, Black, and brown residents, to the outdoors through free educational events. From swamp walks to falconry demonstrations to Everglades documentary screenings, the Miami chapter has become a vital cultural and environmental bridge.

But Latino Outdoors Miami has scaled back programming in recent months out of fear of participant safety, according to program coordinator Shley Suarez-Burgos.

“We’ve had to drop some of our partnerships with certain municipalities due to their contracts with ICE,” Suarez-Burgos said, including a falconry event in collaboration with a local municipality that the group recently postponed until they can find a new host. “It’s scary. A lot of the families we serve are of mixed immigration status. We know, just based on our name and what we do, we’re an easy target.”

The 287(g) program has placed municipalities in a fraught position between securing federal funding and protecting immigrant residents. Suarez-Burgos acknowledged the difficult choices local officials face.

“Many of these folks are also immigrants or come from immigrant families,” she said. “They understand what’s at stake.”

Although the national Latino Outdoors organization has not issued a blanket directive regarding 287(g), it has supported chapters like Miami’s with know your rights resources and training. Still, Suarez-Burgos noted, those tools offer limited protection when fear permeates daily life.

“You see videos online of people getting detained outside their homes or in their cars,” Suarez-Burgos said. “What we need are real safe havens — schools, churches, libraries, parks — places where people don’t have to live in fear just to exist.”

Despite the challenges, Latino Outdoors Miami continues to seek out alternative partnerships. Suarez-Burgos noted ongoing conversations with the city of South Miami, one of the few municipalities actively resisting the state’s implementation of the program.

“A Place of Inclusion and Diversity”

In a university that touts its status as a minority-serving institution, the 287(g) program is creating an environment of fear and exclusion.

“We need a leader who represents us first, and that’s what our interim president promised … but what’s transpired since then is telling us otherwise,” Lopez said.

The union’s opposition to the program is grounded not just in moral or emotional reasoning, Lopez emphasized, but in data.

“There’s ample evidence that when police collaborate with ICE, communities report fewer crimes. Survivors of domestic abuse are less likely to call for help. Trust erodes,” she said.

On May 21, UFF-FIU will host a community town hall with Casas, the police chief. The panel will feature immigration experts, FIU faculty, and student leaders to address community concerns. The conversation will be moderated by Miami Herald’s education reporter, Clara-Sophia Daly.

The union is now turning to broader coalitions. FIU faculty are working with immigration lawyers, including Alana Greer from the Community Justice Project and Juan Carlos Gómez from FIU’s law school, to draft educational materials for students and staff. For Lopez and others, FIU’s participation in the 287(g) program directly undermines its mission.

“We are going to continue to work on that premise: that we can make a difference and that we can make FIU the place that our students and faculty want it to be, which is a place of inclusion and diversity and learning,” said Lopez.

As the university’s future leadership remains uncertain, clouded by a controversial emergency appointment of Nuñez as interim president in February, Lopez warns that political interference is not just a risk, but a present reality.

“The discourse coming from our administration mirrors Tallahassee’s political rhetoric. But we’re not in Tallahassee,” Lopez said. “We need a president who represents FIU, not the governor’s office.”

DeSantis has significantly influenced the leadership of Florida’s public universities through his appointments to the boards of trustees and his influence on presidential searches. He has appointed several members to the boards of trustees for FIU, University of West Florida, New College of Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University, University of South Florida, and Daytona State College. The governor has also appointed presidents to Florida Atlantic University, New College of Florida, and FIU.

“I grew up in Cuba under tight totalitarianism,” said Lopez. “Censorship comes from the government. … This narrative that we’re indoctrinating students from the bottom up, that’s not how the power structures work.”

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