Last Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered a Columbia-owned residence to detain Elmina Aghayeva. The agents allegedly impersonated the New York Police Department and ignored the requests of a Columbia public safety officer. While immigration operations have not yet been documented on Brown’s campus, our wider Providence community has faced ICE’s relentless presence, including a detention just a block away from the John D. Rockefeller Library. Whether it is in New York, Minneapolis or Providence, it is clear that there is no campus or community that ICE won’t target. Each member of the Brown community — students, professors, staff and administrators alike — can play a role in fighting ICE. We must use every tool at our disposal to protect our communities, both on- and off-campus.
In their recent editorial, The Brown Daily Herald’s editorial page board argues that the University is helpless against ICE until Congress and the courts are willing to hold the agency accountable. However, this federal failure to ensure ICE agents and leadership face consequences for their actions does not render the University powerless — Brown can and must enact policies to protect our community from ICE’s presence. Since the election of President Trump in 2016, student groups at over 200 universities across the country have petitioned their campuses to become sanctuaries for undocumented students and staff. Brown Rise Up has collaborated with faculty, alumni and legal experts to identify actions the University could take to limit ICE activity at Brown.
These include mandatory training that ensures campus security officers understand how to identify federal law enforcement and respond accordingly; clear signage designating spaces off limits to ICE agents without judicial warrants and a public operational playbook for how the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Management would respond to ICE agents on campus. Brown must reaffirm their commitment to prevent identifying information from being shared with the Department of Homeland Security beyond that which is legally required, especially in light of requests that the University share data with the new Providence Real Time Crime Center. Brown should choose to not join the RTCC while data access and retention policies remain unclear and the threat of subpoenas against the Providence Police Department is a possibility. The University should also offer training for DPS officers on the differences between judicial and administrative warrants, which could help prevent ICE from misrepresenting their legal authority to enter private spaces. While ICE agents are currently operating under the assumption that any warrant is sufficient, that stance is not legally valid. In addition, limiting what information DHS can access about the Brown community would prevent immigration agents from easily targeting and locating members of our community. Although ICE is not currently being punished for its deceitful and illegal actions, these policies still could be the difference between our classmates remaining safe in their dorms or being deported.
And yet, because ICE operates without federal accountability, it is true that University policy alone will not be enough. If we want to protect our community, we must confront ICE through every avenue, looking not just at the agency itself, but the institutions like hotels, tech firms, private prisons and banks which enable its operations. There is real precedent for pressure campaigns forcing companies to cut support for ICE. Over the past several years, activists have forced eight major banks to stop issuing loans to CoreCivic and the GEO Group, two of the largest private prison companies operating ICE detention centers. The consequences for these companies were severe, as GEO and CoreCivic lost a reported $2.35 billion in credit lines and loans, which challenged their ability to maintain their long-term budgets and obtain new contracts. This history proves that collective resistance can drive real, nationwide change — but only if everyday people, including the students on our campus, get involved.
Today, one of the remaining major financiers of CoreCivic and GEO is headquartered just a few blocks from our main green: Citizens Bank. Since 2024, Citizens has helped these companies coordinate complex credit and bond deals, providing them access to the funds they use to enable ICE activity. This February, community organizers in Providence asked the Brown community to join them in pressuring the bank to drop CoreCivic and GEO as clients.
Boycotts and protests across the Northeast, where most branches of Citizens Bank are located, have been pressuring the bank to stop supporting ICE since January, and a regionwide day of action is planned for March 7. Brown Rise Up and other local organizations in the De-ICE Citizens Bank coalition will be leading a rally at 11 a.m. that day at 120 Waterman Street. When Brown students join this resistance, we will do so alongside communities in Boston, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and more cities. By plugging into this national movement, Brown students can work not only to protect our own community but to prevent ICE violence across the United States.
To truly end ICE terror, the entire Brown community must engage in resistance both on and off our campus. At Columbia, students didn’t stay silent when faced with the illegal abuses of ICE. They took to the streets, and more than 1,000 of us did the same on Jan. 30, walking out in solidarity with students in Minneapolis and across the country. Through the College Hill group of the Deportation Defense Network, Brown students are already helping every week to prevent ICE kidnappings at Providence courthouses. While we encourage students to be sensitive to their personal risk levels, every Brown community member has a role to play for us to collectively fight back against ICE and forge a government that values diversity, not deportation. President Paxson and University administrators, we implore you to take these actionable steps to protect our community to the fullest extent possible. All Brunonians, we call on you to bring the fight straight to ICE. Join us on March 7 and beyond; together we will rise up to build the more just America we all deserve.
Dakota Pippins ’29 is the Partnerships Team Co-Coordinator and Press Liaison for Brown Rise Up and can be reached at dakota_pippins@brown.edu. Raya Gupta ’29 is the Narrative Team Co-Coordinator for Brown Rise Up and can be reached at raya_gupta@brown.edu.
