AAUP-OSU Statement on DHS Violence as a Threat to University Values

As we witness the violence perpetrated by federal government agencies in Minneapolis and elsewhere, including the murders of Alex Pretti and many others, we are aware of how this brutality is affecting communities here in Columbus and creating alarm and insecurity on our own campus. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s intimidation of immigrants hits close to home for us at Ohio State and is part of a malevolent pattern of bias. We have watched as colleagues alter their research and personal plans, refraining from traveling to and from the US, in order to avoid losing control of their lives. Faculty are being discouraged from considering international candidates for open positions due to the extortionist surcharge on H1-B visas. Our students are watching their backs, too. International students have been under attack since Spring 2025, with federal changes in visa status. DREAMers, students with immigrant parents, and students, whether US citizens or not, who are presumed to be foreign, fear open email communication or occupying certain spaces. These are impossible conditions in which to work, to learn, to teach, to exercise academic freedom. Our community deserves better.

Last month, students staged a protest against tabling by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the College of Arts and Sciences job fair, successfully pressuring them to leave. The protest commenced only after students had informed the administration of the fear that CBP’s presence would cause on campus, to no avail. As we’ve seen nationally over the past several months, CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are related agencies, with their work and even their personnel overlapping. For their dissent, two of these students were arrested by OSU police. The logic given for their arrest bears an alarming resemblance to the rationale that governs ICE operations in Minneapolis, and elsewhere: free, conscientious speech is a threat, warranting arrest. While the university has a legal right to create rules about the time, manner, and place of protests, in the past several years, it has wielded this power to gratuitously constrain expression and to criminalize it. This is not the first time in recent years that our Ohio Union building has been turned into an arrest locale, and disturbingly, these acts consistently involve the apprehension of international or non-white communities and their allies and target our own students. We have seen a pattern of aggressive response to pro-Palestine students beginning in Spring 2024, most dramatically in the university-authorized mass arrests of April 25th. It is beyond reprehensible that a culture of arrest-permissiveness seems to have emerged since then, creating fear and abandonment.

These actions are degrading to our standing as a research and educational institution, and they erode faith in our administration’s ability to uphold OSU’s mission and values. We say that, as a university, we are dedicated to “preparing a diverse student body to be leaders and engaged citizens” and that we “listen to multiple voices and engage in civil discourse.” Yet too often, when students engage in OSU citizenship, the administration would rather send them to Butler County or Jackson Pike jail than to listen. 

We urge OSU to stop criminalizing free expression and to create an intellectual civic space that befits a university. And we call on university leaders to explicitly commit to defending our community against lawless intimidation by ICE, CBP, and related agencies. We have no need for trite expressions of concern–we need concrete actions to safeguard vulnerable populations against the threat of campus invasion and confrontation. There is a history of disappointment on the score of administrator response to these kinds of challenges. Many in our university community are used to a lack of proactive support. But in this moment, we hope to be surprised. This moment demands unprecedented action from us all. 

For our part, in AAUP-OSU, inspired by the mass protests and strikes in Minneapolis that have shown the power and role of organized labor in fighting ICE, we are working with others to form strong support networks and share information so that everyone can know their rights. We will continue to update our members and allies via email, and we encourage everyone to draw on our resources page.

For anyone interested in getting involved, email contact@aaup-osu.org to get more information.