Student pressure at the Seattle University has finally forced its law school to sever its ties with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The school suspended its externship in response to an online petition started by students that received 468 signatures in support of cutting off ties with ICE over the separation of immigrant children from their families.
The move drew sharp criticism from different quarters across the country with students asking their schools to reconsider ties with ICE.
“As educators, lawyers, and soon-to-be-lawyers, we hold particular power and bear a special responsibility to be peacemakers and to assist those who are suffering due to the unjust operation of our legal system, laws, and their enforcement,” Law School Dean Annette Clark wrote in an email while announcing the suspension.
Students at institutions like Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland are also opposing their school ties with ICE. Last week, students staged a rally at Johns Hopkins to force the officials to cancel the $1.7 million contracts with its medical school.
“I think a lot of us just had a moment of reckoning with this, and we realized we had to do something when we learned that our university was helping to perpetuate this crisis which has real human costs,” Samantha Agarwal, a fourth-year sociology graduate student at Hopkins, told The Baltimore Sun.
Earlier this year, during an anti-ICE protest at the Northeastern University, the Boston Police arrested one student and 10 activists.
The protesters were rallying in front of the home of the university president Joseph E. Aoun, holding placards seeking his intervention to put an end to multimillion-dollar school contract with the ICE.
11 Arrested in Anti-ICE Protest Outside Northeastern University
