ICE scraps student interviews at NYU career fair after students protest, collect over 1,000 signatures

Officials from U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) canceled student recruitment interviews for an online New York University (NYU) School of Law career fair due to campus backlash.

As first reported by Washington Square News, a petition protesting the agency was signed by more than 1,000 students and organizations at NYU and other local law schools. The outlet reports that at least five employers were skipping the Public Interest Legal Career Fair due to ICE’s presence.

[RELATED: Law students unhappy they use same legal databases as ICE]

”Working with and welcoming ICE recruiters into our community is abhorrent in general, but even more so now, in the wave of violently anti-immigrant executive orders, escalated ICE raids, and the stripping of due process rights for noncitizens through the Laken Riley Act,” the petition says.

”ICE is engaged in the exact kinds of behavior that harms many students, regardless of immigration status,” the document continues. “ICE has a history of racial profiling, retaliating against immigrant rights activists, ignoring the law, fabricating evidence, relying on false ‘evidence’, confiscating and destroying documents and belongings of detainees, and purposeless detentions.”

Scheduled for this past Thursday and Friday, the Public Interest Legal Career Fair attracted over 1,800 online attendees from over 20 law schools last year, according to Washington Square News.

In a statement made to the outlet, law school spokesperson Michael Orey said that ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor had been attending the career fair for “many years.”

“The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with a large number of other federal, state and local government agencies, has participated in the PILC Fair for many years,” he stated. “Students from a number of law schools have registered for interviews with them.”

Campus activism against ICE comes as the agency recently began increasing its deportation operations in New York City.

[RELATED: PROF. ELLWANGER: Universities’ opposition to ICE raids puts professors on the front line]

Nearby Fordham University recently messaged students about how to interact with ICE officials in response to the ongoing deportation efforts.

“Unless law enforcement officers are responding to a lawful request, Fordham Public Safety will not allow them on campus, nor share any student or employee information with law enforcement,” the school stated.