MILWAUKEE — A student group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is circulating a petition to fight the ability of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to come on campus.
This comes after at least 10 international UW-Milwaukee students or recent graduates had their visas revoked or their immigration status terminated, as of Wednesday.
Chris Van Valkenberg leads the Sanctuary Student Alliance, which aims to make UW-Milwaukee a “sanctuary campus” to protect students and staff from ICE raids. The alliance created a petition in support of this, and it already has more than 270 signatures as of Thursday night.
There are dozens of signs around campus linking to the petition.
“The students on campus, the ones getting their visas revoked, the ones who are immigrants, imagine what they are feeling like right now. The terror and the fear they must be feeling,” said Van Valkenberg.
Van Valkenberg is planning a rally next week in support of the affected students and staff.
“If there is a consistent, constant threat of federal agencies and ICE coming on to campus, then who knows what they are going to be doing and how that’s going to be affecting every single student here,” he said. “It’s not providing that safe space and not allowing the space to learn. We should be stressed about cramming for finals, not about whether or not our friends and classmates are going to be picked off on campus.”
UW-Milwaukee leadership sent out an email to faculty and staff about the student visa revocations. The email said the university’s Center for International Education (CIE) has been, or will be, in contact with all affected individuals to support them as it can.
The email said the CIE also proactively sent communications to all international students to remind them of available resources; immigration coordinators are taking appointments with students and can refer individuals to legal resources upon request.
The Vice Chancellor for Community Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Craig Thompson, said university leadership is trying to get more information from the federal government about why 26 people with ties to the university had their visas terminated as of Thursday. That includes 15 current students and 11 alumni who received employment extensions of their visas.
“We are trying to make sure that we reach out, provide any information we can to the students being affected and try to find out more about why these visas are being terminated. We don’t have a lot of specific answers yet,” Thompson said.
Thompson was part of a group from UW-Madison in Washington, D.C. this week lobbying against potential cuts to federal funding for universities.
