Ohio State students protest presence of CBP recruiters at university career fair

Members of the Ohio State University Graduate Students Alliance learned last week that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would have recruiters in attendance at the Ohio State spring career fair, set to take place at the Ohio Union today (Tuesday, Jan. 20).

The appearance takes place as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has continued to ramp up immigration enforcement in partnership with myriad federal agencies, including CBP, and less than two weeks after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, an incident that has sparked an ongoing national conversation about the agency’s mission and use of force.

“The main purpose of the Graduate Students Alliance, which I am part of, is to organize grad students across departments at OSU. And one of the major concerns, especially for international students, students of color, and others who are particularly at risk, is ICE and Border Patrol activity in Columbus,” said Gabriel Gorre of GSA, which will join a coalition of organizations that includes Trans Experimental Action, Columbus 50501, Students for Justice in Palestine, and AAUP Ohio State, among others, for a rally protesting the on-campus presence of CBP recruiters. (The protest is set to take place outside of the Ohio Union beginning at 1 p.m. today.) “Seeing that Ohio State is inviting them onto the campus to be a part of the career fair is in a lot of ways a threat to our members. … And I think it’s also important to note that it violates OSU’s own stated principals. [The university] repeatedly talks about values related to inclusion, to care, to compassion, integrity, respect – all of those things. And given what is very publicly happening in the news right now, to bring in Customs and Border Protection for any reason, to us violates those values and the promises that those values are based upon.”

Reached for comment last week, Ohio State spokesman Ben Johnson said the event, coordinated by Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences, “is a large career fair with more than 150 public and private sector employees,” and that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been in attendance “several years in a row.” “Typically, employers who have attended in the past are invited to attend again,” wrote Johnson, who added that, as with all large gatherings, the Ohio State Department of Public Safety and the Campus Activism and Event Engagement team would “assess and staff appropriately.”

While both ICE and U.S. Custom and Border Protection fall within the Department of Homeland Security, the agencies have traditionally been tasked with different responsibilities, with ICE enforcing immigration law within the country and CBP enforcing immigration along the border, in addition to overseeing security at U.S. entry points. 

Under the Trump administration, however, these roles have become increasingly blurred, with agents pulled from a range of federal agencies to participate in immigration enforcement operations. This has increasingly led to Border Patrol officers taking part in immigration raids within the United States alongside ICE. And in mid-January, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of three Minnesota residents who claimed their constitutional rights had been violated by ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies, challenging the Trump administration’s policy of racial profiling, unlawful seizure, and its practice of arresting people without a warrant or probable cause.

“CBP has been deployed in Minneapolis to suppress the protests and to be a show of force for the Trump administration, backing up ICE as it brutalizes the people of Minneapolis,” said Gorre, who noted that the lines previously drawn to delineate between ICE and CBP were never as explicit as stated, given that CPB is granted authority to operate within 100 air miles of U.S. land and coastal borders – a territory that covers a wide swath of the U.S. population. “The idea that we have to make any distinction between any of the DHS entities, it’s just not accurate at this point.” 

The statement issued to Matter News by OSU spokesman Johnson mirrors the one given by the university to the Graduate Students Alliance, posted to the organization’s Instagram page on Monday, which also stated that the career fair was voluntary for students who were “welcome to engage with any attending employers that are relevant to their career interests.”

“This is me speaking in my personal capacity and not as a representative of GSA, but at this point, CBP is obviously going to be [at the career fair] and there’s nothing we can do to force OSU to relinquish that invitation,” Gorre said. “But my hope is … that through peaceful demonstration we can indicate both the disapproval of the wider student body over what that administration at Ohio State has been doing and to make it clear to the people who are going to the career fair that you shouldn’t apply for those positions, because regardless of their promises, this is what they are going to have you doing. … And while personally I am skeptical it will change the overall tenor of the OSU administration, I’m hopeful that at least some people within it have started to recognize this is something they shouldn’t have done, and that this decision was a mistake.”