FIU Campus Police and the ICE Agreement: Details, Concerns, and Community Impact
At Florida International University (FIU), a campus where over 60% of students identify as Latinx and many are immigrants or international students, a climate of fear is mounting due to a finalized agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This agreement, particularly the 287(g) Task Force Model, has sparked significant outrage among students, faculty, and community advocates, raising concerns about its potential impact on campus safety, trust, and academic freedom.
The 287(g) Agreement: Expanding Immigration Enforcement Powers
The term "287(g)" refers specifically to section 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. These agreements allow state and local authorities to assume federal immigration control functions. Once rare-as of 2016, at the end of the Barack Obama administration, only 32 law enforcement agencies had active agreements. Some campus police departments are now also participating in the 287(g) program.
FIU applied for the 287(g) Task Force Model late last year. FIU is among 13 Florida university police departments that now have a finalized 287(g) agreement signed both by the university and ICE. All 13 universities have signed on to ICE’s “Task Force Model,” the most expansive version of the 287(g) agreement. It gives trained officers the authority to enforce federal immigration law - including the ability to arrest individuals for immigration violations and access federal databases. Under this arrangement, campus police officers could be granted immigration enforcement powers, such as identifying and detaining undocumented individuals during routine policing.
The other universities with finalized 287(g) agreements are:
- Florida A&M University
- Florida Gulf Coast University
- Florida Polytechnic University
- Florida SouthWestern State College
- Florida State University
- New College of Florida
- Northwest Florida State College
- Tallahassee Community College
- University of Central Florida
- University of Florida
- University of North Florida
- University of West Florida
Concerns and Opposition from Faculty and Students
The finalized agreement has fueled considerable controversy on campus. Students and faculty have organized protests, rallies, social media campaigns, and public meetings to demand that their police departments withdraw from the agreement. The United Faculty of Florida-FIU (UFF-FIU) has led a sustained campaign urging the university to withdraw from the program.
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“It’s not a matter of how will [students] be impacted-they’re already impacted,” Lopez said. “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.
Faculty members have also expressed strong opposition to the implementation of these agreements, warning that they will erode trust in campus police and expose students to racial profiling. One effect of 287(g) agreements, the ACLU of Florida notes, is to discourage people from reporting crimes, as immigrant victims avoid contacting police out of fear that their immigration status might be questioned or revoked.
Dariel Gomez, a senior at FIU, has been vocal in his opposition to the agreement and is concerned that students may be falsely arrested and end up at the new detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“We have not been reassured that this won’t be happening,” said Gomez.
University Leadership's Perspective
The decision to enter FIU into the agreement was made by the university police chief, Alexander Casas. He said he felt it was in the best interest of the university and its students to formalize a relationship with ICE, giving FIU police more control over how immigration enforcement is handled on campus. FIU President Jeanette Nuñez told faculty during a meeting that she supported Casas’ decision.
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In an interview with the Miami Herald in June - before the agreement was finalized - Casas said immigration enforcement is clearly a law enforcement priority at both the state and national level. He said he chose to sign on to support that priority, likening immigration to any other enforcement issue, such as “a traffic initiative, fentanyl, [or] human trafficking.”
Casas has emphasized that the new agreement is primarily about clarifying responsibilities, not about radically changing the department’s behavior. FIU will decide how many officers to train, and the agreement does not mandate that police participate in every ICE operation.
Details of the Agreement and its Implementation
Although FIU police officers have not yet begun the required 50-hour online training - and there is no set timeline for when it will begin - Casas confirmed that once trained, officers will be able to make arrests if they have probable cause.
Casas acknowledged that determining probable cause for immigration enforcement “really is a case-by-case thing, because the devil is in the details.”
“The judicial standard, which is what we have to adhere to,” he said, “is you have to have a set of facts that would make a reasonable person believe that a crime occurred and that this person committed that crime.”
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Casas said that if ICE came onto campus with a judicial warrant, his officers would assist in locating the individual and ensuring that the interaction remained calm and safe.
Once trained, FIU officers will gain access to a federal immigration database. This will allow them to check a person’s visa status or see if there is a deportation order, even if there is no existing warrant in the state’s criminal system.
Previously, if an FIU officer ran a criminal history check, which Casas said his officers always did, a persons’ immigration status or visa status would not show up unless they had a warrant for arrest. “It wouldn’t show up if they were just undocumented, if they were completely under the radar,” said Casas.
State and National Context
It is not legally required for university police to enter 287(g) agreements. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly encouraged all law enforcement agencies in Florida to sign on. With the addition of these university police departments, Florida now has more finalized 287(g) agreements than any other state, followed by Texas. A total of 306 agencies nationwide have signed on.
All 67 counties in the state, including Broward and Miami-Dade, have entered the agreement. Latinx enclaves such as Hialeah and Doral, home to large Donald Trump voting blocs, also signed the agreement.
The 287(g) program has placed municipalities in a fraught position between securing federal funding and protecting immigrant residents.
Community Impact and Response
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.
“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.
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.
Broader Implications and Concerns
Since its establishment in 1996, civil rights advocates and researchers have documented that the 287 (g) program often targets individuals with little or no criminal history and strains the relationship between police and immigrant communities.
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.
In June 2023, during the Joe Biden administration, more than 100 organizations-including the ACLU, NILC, and United We Dream-wrote a joint letter to then-Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, calling for all 287(g) agreements to be revoked. A year before that, in 2022, the ACLU published a report titled License to Abuse, detailing how the 287(g) program had empowered sheriffs with histories of racism and civil rights violations, becoming a tool for immigration persecution that undermined racial justice and community safety. Unfortunately, the Biden administration didn’t heed this call.
FIU's Response and Future Actions
On May 21, UFF-FIU hosted a community town hall with Casas, the police chief. The panel featured immigration experts, FIU faculty, and student leaders to address community concerns. The union is now turning to broader coalitions.
In an attempt to combat an anticipated ICE crackdown across Florida, students belonging to a group called Justice in Palestine at FIU, which also includes faculty and community members, invited others to learn about immigrant rights in the spring.
“We want to ensure that our school, our administration is going to prioritize student safety over any other priorities,” Abedulazis said.
tags: #FIU #campus #police #ICE #agreement #details
