Students at Florida International University (FIU) protested on Thursday, September 18, against an agreement signed by the institution that will allow school police to question students about their immigration status and detain them if they suspect they are in the United States illegally.
About 30 people attended the rally, held on the grounds of the university’s Graham Center, carrying signs that read “ICE – an acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – out of FIU” and shouting that the letter “i” in the school’s acronym refers to the international character of the institution.
Protests at Florida International University
FIU students and faculty protest university’s agreement with ICE https://t.co/6BaLS2bHXB
– Univision 23 Miami (@Univision23) September 18, 2025
“What that agreement does is it basically uses our FIU police officers to interrogate and detain migrant students based on their immigration status.
“These types of agreements are voluntary and are very unpopular at a university like FIU, where the majority of students are Latino,” Dariel Gómez, one of the protest organizers, told EFE.
The event took place at the same time as the university’s executive board held a meeting on campus.
And Gomez, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), warned that they will continue to organize demonstrations “until the university decides to pull out of the agreement.”
“We know students who have stopped attending college because they don’t feel comfortable being on campus when the Police are working with ICE,” he added.
The protest also condemned the appointment a month ago of former Florida Vice Governor Jeanette Nuñez as president of FIU, considered a nod in favor of the anti-immigrant policy implemented in this heavily migrant-populated state.
“There are many students who can no longer afford to pay because in February of this year the Florida government raised the price of tuition for migrant students,” Gomez recalled.
Florida, governed by Republican Ron DeSantis, is one of the states that is most faithfully following U.S. President Donald Trump’s designs on immigration.
A case in point is the‘Alligator Alcatraz‘ (Alcatraz of the Caymans) migrant detention center opened in a hurry last July during a Trump visit to the state, and which is the subject of a court battle over its legality.
With information from EFE
