UF campus police’s role in purging our international community sends a perverse message | Opinion
ICE and UF
The Officers and Board of Directors of the Retired Faculty of the University of Florida (RFUF) are distressed and disgusted regarding state, local and UF’s collusion with the outrageous if not unconstitutional visa revocations of international students, faculty and staff at universities across the country, the Florida State University System and the University of Florida specifically.
Particularly distressing is the covert and startling way this action has occurred. UF police have essentially been deputized under the federal ICE 287(g) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) as “force multipliers” to detain individuals without warrants solely on suspicion of immigration violations. Affected students, faculty and staff have reportedly received little to no formal notice, rationale, or recourse, leaving them confused and in abject terror and uncertainty about their academic futures, legal status and personal well-being.
Allowing the ICE 287(g) MOA to go forward sends an unconscionably perverse message to the university community. Perhaps it may irreversibly erode the trust expected of the UF Police Department while unnecessarily diverting officers from their primary mission: campus safety.
Even U.S. citizens run the risk of detention if campus police, using cultural profiling as instructed by ICE, take action. Fear of detention could easily prevent a student from seeking medical attention, mental health treatment, or even educational support services. Most disturbing is ICE’s authority to access international student data in search of even the smallest infraction to be loosely interpreted as criminal for shameless justification of deportation.
We ask UF Interim President Kent Fuchs to devote the substantial time remaining in his tenure to combat the metastatic symptoms of authoritarian intrusion into the university’s internal operations. He must immediately condemn and withdraw from the ICE 287(g) Program. The UF Police Department’s published guiding principles are completely inconsistent with and anathema to any activity under an ICE 287(g) MOA.
States such as Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware and New Mexico have no such MOAs. Furthermore, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Oregon and California have enacted legislation prohibiting such MOAs with ICE.
Fuchs must make public the scope and consequences of UF’s visa crisis, including the number of affected students, faculty and staff and the rationales provided for visa revocation. He also must contact all those who have already suffered or are at risk of visa revocation to make certain they clearly understand due process protections and are provided legal or administrative counsel, if necessary. For those who have been compelled to leave the United States, make certain that UF continues to support remote participation in their education or professional role, assuming they joined UF with a valid visa.
Surely, ICE and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have sufficient authority and bandwidth to operate independently without conscripting campus police officers. That a UF agency has been authorized to comply in ICE’s misguided and indiscriminate attempt to purge our international community is reprehensible.
We greatly respect and appreciate UF’s leadership in achieving national preeminence in education, research and public service, which is precisely why we are appealing to Fuchs to maintain the highest ethical standards and independence and why we stand ready to assist him in this urgently needed action. Our international community of students, faculty and staff deserve nothing less.
Richard D’Alli (Medicine),
immediate past president 2024-2025,
Steve Lodle (Communications),
chair,
RFUF Communications Committee,
Gainesville
FWC unqualified
Re: the May 22 story, “Two more FWC officers’ body cam footage from Pino boat crash deleted, agency says.” Now it’s four deleted videos. How unprofessional and unbelievable. Until the investigation is completed, it’s still a death investigation.
Any professional death investigator knows that nothing is deleted until the state attorney and the medical examiner reach their conclusions. Even then, it should be kept until all civil avenues have been settled. This is pure evidence that FWC has no reason to investigate these matters. As soon as a death occurs, it should be turned over to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office, which has exceptionally trained investigators with a wealth of experience.
Let FWC enforce boating violations, not death investigations.
Robert Lynch,
Fort Lauderdale
Who is a martyr?
Re: Mary Anna Mancuso’s May 23 op-ed, “J6 rioter Ashli Babbitt isn’t a martyr.” Make no mistake, Babbitt was murdered. She was unarmed and helpless at the time she was shot.
The op-ed struck me as quite hypocritical, as I saw no such article in this newspaper proclaiming George Floyd wasn’t a martyr and his family, who got much more than Babbitt’s family, shouldn’t have received compensation.
I’m not trying to condone the actions of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who was convicted of killing Floyd, but Floyd was treated as a martyr; there even are statues of him in Minneapolis.
Dave Schaublin,
Key Largo
Spot-on op-ed
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Cannot heap enough praise on the integrity of Mary Anna Mancuso’s May 23 op-ed, “J6 rioter Ashli Babbitt isn’t a martyr,” while recognizing the courage it takes for a news editor to do the right thing and say it as it is.
Society simply cannot continue to accept the glorification of crime. Mancuso has single-handedly helped elevate the faith of many who look to intrepid journalists for transparency and truth.
Phillip M. Church,
South Miami
Campus protests
The attack on Harvard University and foreign students in the name of fighting antisemitism is ludicrous.
Are we to believe that the many students protesting under the banner “Not in My Name” and the very president of Harvard are antisemitic?
When did anti-war and antisemitic become synonyms?
Sonja I. Pantry,
Miramar
Disaster ahead
We are in the middle of a climate change policy revision nightmare. Funding has been cut to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, Congress is considering startling reversals of regulations and tax credits designed to reduce the impact of fossil fuels on our environment. As if this were not enough, there are efforts to weaken the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which aids communities when disasters hit.
We are weakening the nation’s forecasting and assistance capabilities, as we also weaken the regulations which fight climate change. This is no time to be silent.
Contact Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody. Call your congressman or woman. Get involved in climate organizations, such as Citizens Climate Lobby. Our lives may depend upon it.
Kathryn Carroll,
Miami
DeSantis knows best?
While signing a bill earlier this month that stops local governments from adding fluoride to water, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “some of these people, they think that they know better for you than you do for yourself.”
How can public heath be solely an individual choice? Isn’t the public’s health serving the greater good?
DeSantis and his cronies in the legislature have been finding ways to tell Floridians what we can and cannot do. Books are banned. Universities are no longer places for open ideas and learning. A woman can no longer make decisions about her own body. We no longer can acknowledge and celebrate our diversity as we please. Many among us live in fear of deportation.
Our government is seemingly promoting and imposing its own vision of what it thinks is right for Floridians. We are free only if we toe the line the state has laid. A lot of us think differently. Hopefully, the next elections will show how fed up we are.
Marsha Broad,
Miami
Pushy salesman
Why is it that, when I listen to President Donald Trump speak on the economy, it’s like he’s trying to sell a big, beautiful timeshare to me and the American electorate?
Jesus Mendez,
Coral Gables