U of A won’t stop ICE recruitment at law college as students complain

But university officials say to bar ICE recruitment would be a political decision that violates free speech, students were told. The UA also says it doesn’t limit employment opportunities for students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE has been working to recruit students from UA’s James E. Rogers College of Law through the university's employment platform, CareerCAT, and at an annual hiring event in February hosted by UA’s Law Career Development Office, where students are connected with government, public interest and nonprofit employers.

Student groups, including the National Lawyers Guild Student Chapter at Arizona Law, the Student Bar Association Arizona, and the American Constitution Society asked the law college’s administration to remove ICE’s job postings, and to consider how the UA’s ethics and institutional practices align with employers the university welcomes onto campus.

“I am disappointed that ICE is able to recruit from law schools while representing the degradation of the rule of law in their conduct,” said John Conley, a second-year UA law student and a member of the National Lawyers Guild Student Chapter at Arizona Law, a progressive group focused on social justice, community activism and legal change.

“But I’m also very inspired," Conley said, "by the amount of student organizing that occurred across multiple organizations. I’m also very grateful for the law school administration being so transparent and so willing to hear students out."

Law students said they were told by university officials that, according to the College of Law’s administration and UA’s Office of General Counsel, ICE could not be removed from the Sonoran Public Sector Interview Program, the annual hiring event in February.

The students said they were told that because ICE is a public institution, its removal from the event would become a First Amendment issue, and also that since the agency was recruiting virtually, its agents were not physically going to be on campus.

UA spokesperson Mitch Zak later told the Star in an emailed statement: “As a public institution, the University of Arizona does not limit participation in career fairs based on an employer’s mission. These events connect students with a wide range of employment opportunities and support informed career decision-making.”

Zak did not respond to the Star’s questions for Jason Kreag, interim dean of UA’s law college, including: whether Kreag responded to letters and statements by student groups expressing concern; whether companies have a First Amendment right to advertise job openings at any school they wish to recruit from; and whether the law college intends to continue having ICE post job openings.

Zak also did not respond to the Star’s question about whether these recruitment opportunities mean UA’s law college is open to sharing students’ data with ICE, including their immigration status and whether or not they need work sponsorship to work in the United States.

'Inconsistent' with foundational principles

ICE has been at the center of controversies surrounding the fatal shootings by federal agents of two Minneapolis residents, U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during the agency’s crackdown there in January, including its use of masked agents and what the UA student critics call warrantless raids. The Trump administration’s decision to rescind a Department of Homeland Security policy, which had restricted ICE activity in schools, hospitals and places of worship, has also been controversial.

The Student Bar Association Arizona said law students are trained to follow due process, constitutional protections and the rule of law as foundational principles. They are concerned about the decision to allow ICE “to participate in recruitment at a time when there are serious, widely reported concerns about ICE practices that appear inconsistent with these principles," the group's statement said. 

The National Lawyers Guild has also urged the law college to remove ICE from the recruitment process.

“ICE agents continually violate civilians’ constitutional protections against unlawful seizures, flagrantly disregard due process, and employ racial profiling as a policing tactic,” the guild said in a Jan. 27 statement to college administrators, also faulting “ICE’s continuous use of lethal force against peaceful demonstrators" and saying, "With augmented funding and impunity, these activities will only escalate, threatening the safety of our students and the broader community.”

UA College Democrats are circulating a petition calling on UA President Suresh Garimella to "protect students" from ICE by showing non-cooperation with the agency, not disclosing any student information, educating students on their rights, and training faculty and staff on how to respond to DHS activity on campus.

The petition had more than 1,150 signatures as of Wednesday.

ICE’s job posting with CareerCAT

ICE had a job posting on CareerCAT for an unpaid externship with its Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, where the law student’s practice area would be “immigration law — enforcement.” The interview process was to be held online on Feb. 12 for a job in the Phoenix and Tucson offices.

The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor “provides legal advice and prudential counsel to ICE personnel on their law enforcement authorities,” said the job posting. The job responsibilities included assisting office attorneys in representing the U.S. government in immigrant removal proceedings before judges, and helping to interpret “highly complex immigration and customs laws,” among other roles.

Conley said eight other employers who had also planned to recruit law students as part of the Sonoran Public Sector Interview Program partially boycotted as a result of ICE’s involvement. While they partially recruited through the program, they moved their interview processes off-campus, he said, declining to name them.

Students seek boycott; UA cites First Amendment

Members of the UA law college’s American Constitution Society sent a letter to the Career Development Office and Interim Dean Kreag after noticing ICE job postings. It said law school administration must “stay true to its commitment to stand against brazen violations of the rule of law” and “refuse that its resources be used to support the erosion of due process” by allowing ICE to recruit at the school.

In response, a meeting was set up between the career office, Kreag and the students, said Conley. He said the students were grateful the dean held the meeting, but that it was held to explain to students why ICE couldn’t be removed from recruiting.

“The primary reason was this: Because ICE, (under) DHS, is a public institution, taking ICE off of the platform would be a First Amendment issue,” Conley said. “It would be just like a suppression of speech and expression to do that, because it would be targeted. The school would be doing (this) essentially because of what the agency (ICE) does and stands for. And there was a lot of discussion about that, but it was clear that the Office of General Counsel for the school had urged this as the final decision for Dean Kreag, and people were disappointed.”

“… There’s also the fear of the University of Arizona and the law school becoming a target of this presidential administration, becoming national news" if ICE recruitment was barred, Conley said. 

Since ICE wasn’t going to have a physical presence on campus, there wasn't a good case to remove the agency from the recruitment program, according to the Office of General Counsel, Conley said. Physical presence could raise concerns about potential harm to students, or about people not wanting to go to school on those days for fear of being “grabbed for looking physically non-white and physically international or foreign-born,” Conley said, but having virtual recruitment disarmed that argument. 

Conley said Kreag is a good, diplomatic leader who encouraged the students to use their own First Amendment rights to organize as they saw fit.

It was in the next few days after that meeting that Pretti was shot and killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, Conley said. 

The Student Bar Association Arizona, the law school's student government, then issued a statement saying it recognizes the UA is a public institution with legal obligations, including upholding First Amendment principles, but also that it is obligated to administer recruitment opportunities “through established, viewpoint-neutral processes, and committing to equal access and non-discrimination in employment-related programming.”

That's also when the National Lawyers Guild wrote to the college, asking it to “remove job postings from any organization or firm engaged in widely documented constitutional violations and unlawful violence against civilians.”

The guild also said any “retaliatory behavior made by faculty, staff, or any other member of the Arizona Law community towards students” for expressing opposition to ICE would be intolerable.

Said Conley: “I walk away feeling energized by the amount of community involvement and community pressure."