Outrage amongst the SXU Community, on Thursday March 21st, 2019, when ICE as part of Homeland Security attended the SXU Internship and Job Fair. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE,) under the guise of Homeland Security, was in attendance of the job fair.
Twitter user @WaladShami was one of the first attendants to speak out on the matter.
They tweeted, “What the **** this is disgusting @SaintXavier. How dare you go around tokenizing the Latinx population on campus, claiming to be a “diverse campus,” then invite ICE? Do you know how many undocumented students our campus has? How many people have died under ICE custody?”
Attached to the tweets were photographs of the booth that ICE had set up.
@WaladShami then continues, “What about your Arab & Muslim constituents? How dare you invite DHS on campus. You should invest more money to deal with all the ******* rapists on campus. Everyone please RT and email the president she should be ashamed for inviting ICE on campus. @SaintXavier @ LaurieMJoyner,” while attaching contact information for both Laurie M. Joyner, Ph.D., President of SXU, and Maggie Eaheart, M.A., Chief of Staff.
Amongst the many response personal attacks fueled by ignorance and racism, SXU’s Career Services (@SXU) responded, “We share your feelings & appreciate the reaction an ICE banner causes. We were surprised as ICE was not expected at our Fair. Please accept our apology. Would you like to discuss? Please contact VP Tony Campbell @ 773-298- 3121 or Campbell@sxu.edu at your convenience.”
This response wasn’t satisfying enough for the SXU population, however. As @ jjavier410 said, “Someone must’ve told them to go to the job fair! Someone must’ve helped them to a table. That someone had to be from SXU. I don’t believe ICE walked in all willy nilly and decided that was their table! Should’ve told them to turn around and leave, at the door!”
@WaladShami shared, “[SXU] hasn’t reached out to me [privately]. The university needs to take legitimate action to combat rising white supremacy on campus. No more empty rhetoric from the President (who blocked me on Twitter) or the Dean of Students. That means having real conversations on what white supremacy is, how it manifests on college campuses, and how SXU has a moral obligation to address and denounce it. To claim that they didn’t know ICE was going to be present on campus is even worse than knowing they would be there. How do you not know who’s going to be on campus? That poses a real security threat to student-constitutes and faculty alike.”
Twitter user @junkyard_d0g also stated, “**** (and I cannot stress this enough) SXU @SaintXavier,” continuing “@ SaintXavier @SXUCareer Instead of being white supremacists follow the lead of the Sisters of Mercy for once and call attention to the despicable actions of ICE.”
They further elaborate, “This means you don’t actually support DACA students or undocumented students…you just exploited them for likes @SaintXavier,” to which @SXUCareer responded “We appreciate you sharing this. We regret this situation that has elicited strong feelings on an important topic. Most importantly, this does not reflect our core values. VP Tony Campbell, is available to speak with you. He can be reached at 773-298- 3121 or Campbell@sxu.edu”
In response, on March 25th, 2019, SXU’s Gina M. Rossetti, PH.D., Associate Professor within the Language and Literature Department, reached out to students and faculty, inviting them to attend an open Campus Discussion. She relays, “In light of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s investigative service ICE in attendance at SXU’s Internship and Job Fair, the SXU community is invited to a campus discussion titled “Should SXU be a Sanctuary School?” at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26 in the Butler Reception Room.”
Some topics to be discussed included, but were not limited to, “Reasons students, staff and faculty members were offended and felt threatened by recent events,” “The importance of recognizing the impact of events on the greater SXU community,” “How this event and others impact our campus climate,” and “How we need to create systemic campus change to honor and support that we are a minority-serving institution.”
The Xavierite was unable to attend the open discussion, but time was set aside to have an interview with Tony Campbell, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students.
Campbell didn’t feel comfortable speaking on matters such as the registration process of organizations. When asked when he first found out about ICE’s presence at the job fair, Campbell said, “When I found out, there was about 3:15 to 3:25 the day of the Career Fair. I was in meetings all day, so I was walking down to see it. By the time I got there, everybody was packing up.”
Campbell, to his knowledge, which hadn’t been confirmed with Career Services, shared that Homeland Security had registered looking for recruitment for illegal activity such as money laundering and human trafficking.
“I don’t think there’s much controversy over wanting to prevent human trafficking.” Campbell expressed a desire to set things right. “We’re sorry that it had occurred. We also said [at the Open Discussion] was that we will take measures in the future to make sure that those kinds of things don’t happen again. Which would include things like having multiple people review the list of employers, doing walkthroughs before we open the doors. We want to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Campbell also shared that the school’s support of undocumented students still existed. “We certainly do support DACA and undocumented students. FERPA (Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act) will not allow us to give immigration status or any other identifying information about students to anybody without written consent or a warrant.”
Student Elise Valencia shared “It pissed me off. We’re a school that supposed to support kids that [are] DACA, but we invited the very same people that are tearing their families apart.”
Eric Perez
News Reporter