Since March 2025, at least 15 Florida public universities and colleges, including the University of Florida and Florida State College at Jacksonville, have signed memorandums of agreement for their campus police departments to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
These partnerships authorize ICE agents to expand the role of campus police officers so they can receive training and “perform certain functions of an immigration officer.”
The agreements give campus police officers the federal authority to question students who are believed to be immigrants about their legal right to be in the country. Campus police officers can arrest students if the officers have “reason to believe the alien to be arrested is in the United States in violation of law.” Campus police can also check federal immigration databases to see students’ immigration status.
The list of universities in the state that have signed on to these agreements includes leading research universities such as Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University in Miami, or FIU, where we work as professors of education. We are unaware of any school in the Florida state university system that has publicly said they will not sign an agreement.
In the past few decades, the U.S. government has classified universities as “sensitive” spaces that are protected from aggressive immigration enforcement. This means that schools, like churches and hospitals, have until recently been generally considered off-limits for immigration enforcement officers.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump revoked these long-standing Department of Homeland Security protections.
A shift on campus
As scholars, we study relationships between schools and democracy, from how students learn languages to how students and educators can become leaders.
As professors, we teach many students who are immigrants or are from foreign countries who come to the U.S. for their studies, as well as many who are children of immigrants.
As a result of these new initiatives, we are seeing and personally experiencing an intensifying climate of uncertainty and anxiety on our campus. These policies are worsening many of our students’ sense of belonging.
Understanding the changes
Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement is supported by the federal 287(g) program, a 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. This amendment to the wide-ranging immigration law lets ICE delegate certain federal enforcement activities to local state police.
In February 2025, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis directed state universities to enter into 287(g) partnerships with ICE and to “deputize” university police officers to enforce federal immigration laws on school campuses.
ICE does not have blanket access to student records, which remain protected under federal privacy law. But 287(g) agreements create new pathways for information to flow through campus police encounters, effectively lowering the barrier between university data and federal immigration enforcement.
There are no official reports of FIU or other Florida university campus police officers arresting students because of their immigration status. A few college students, though, have been detained off-campus by local police agencies and then turned over to ICE.
FIU’s communications team wrote in a statement to The Conversation: “Last year FIU Police signed a 287(g) memorandum of agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as have other state university, local and state law enforcement agencies in Florida. The 287(g) memorandum of agreement for Florida International University is readily available from ICE.gov.”
“Since signing the agreement, there have been no immigration-related enforcement actions on our campuses,” FIU’s statement continued.
Florida Atlantic University did not respond to a request for comment.
In January 2026, an immigration activist recorded FIU’s chief of police saying at a FIU meeting that if ICE requests campus police’s help, they would comply.
As FIU faculty members, we have not received any explicit guidance on what to do if an ICE agent comes to campus, or if a campus police officer tries to arrest someone for immigration reasons in our classrooms.
FIU President Jeanette Nuñez said in 2025 that there was “much confusion, much angst, and much misinformation” about the agreement.
Other universities have emphasized the need to comply with state directives.
Some Florida university officials have said that campus police will not target students or conduct raids as part of their routine cooperation with federal authorities.
Heightened stress and anxiety
As educators, our work has shifted over this past academic year from providing instruction to focusing more on mentoring our students as whole people. Our students are questioning how much their university supports them.
Daily, we observe how Trump’s immigration policies, including travel bans the U.S. has placed on certain countries, heighten stress for all of our students, regardless of their immigration status. Our international and immigrant students have told us they are fearful of the government’s increased surveillance.
One graduate student shared that he was hesitant to leave his dorm room and participate in any campus activities for fear of possible arrest because of his immigration status.
Another student said he would not leave the U.S. to visit his mother who was sick with cancer for fear he would not be let back into the country. His mother has since passed without his presence.
Many students, including one international doctoral student and father to young children, are unable to return to their homeland and visit their relatives or conduct research due to current travel bans placed upon 75 countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.
These new policies have also prompted student and faculty protests at our university and other public universities across Florida.
Some Florida Atlantic University students in Boca Raton staged a walkout on Feb. 25, 2026, to protest the school’s agreement with ICE.
Florida State University students called on administrators in February 2026 to set up a “sanctuary campus,” which would limit FSU partnerships with ICE.
We are trying to create more opportunities for open dialogue and for sharing students’ emotions and experiences related to these policies. We are also helping students find resources, including legal aid, that could help them or their peers if they have a negative encounter with ICE or campus police.
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Refuge or risk
Universities, especially in conservative states such as Florida, may continue to market themselves as places of inclusion, mobility and global belonging. This is true even as schools cut diversity, equity and inclusion programs and as some students experience heightened surveillance, visa cancellations, detention or deportation.
One of our FIU graduate students recently explained how these policies are affecting their day-to-day life.
“I just want to finish my studies as soon as possible and go back to my country. I feel unwelcome and unsafe on campus. I don’t want to join campus activities anymore because students can be targeted there,” the student said. “I no longer trust campus police officers and won’t ask them for help, even if I need it. I am afraid I will be profiled even though I am here legally.”
When campus police are folded into federal immigration work, we believe that universities cannot claim they offer more refuge than risk.
