Students at Florida universities protest campus police partnerships with ICE as FIU free speech fight continues

Students at Florida public universities have staged protests on at least 10 campuses against agreements that let university police officers work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a review by FIU's Caplin News published Monday by WLRN, making the state's universities a focal point in the national fight over immigration enforcement.

The demonstrations stretch from Pensacola to Boca Raton. They have drawn hundreds of marchers in Gainesville, a federal court fight in Miami and a confrontation in Tallahassee with Byron Donalds, now Florida's governor-elect. Florida is the only state where university police departments are partnering in immigration enforcement, the Caplin News report found.

How campus police became part of immigration enforcement

The agreements are known as 287(g) memorandums of agreement, after the section of federal immigration law that lets ICE delegate some enforcement duties to state and local police. In February 2025, Gov. Ron DeSantis directed state universities to enter into 287(g) partnerships with ICE and deputize university police officers, according to an April 2026 analysis by university faculty members published by WLRN.

Under those agreements, campus officers can be trained to "perform certain functions of an immigration officer," the faculty analysis said. They can question people believed to be immigrants about their legal status, check federal immigration databases and make arrests when they have "reason to believe the alien to be arrested is in the United States in violation of law."

The Caplin News report said administrators at the University of Florida and 11 other university campuses, representing more than 400,000 students, agreed last year to cooperate with ICE. The faculty analysis counted at least 15 Florida public universities and colleges that had signed agreements since March 2025. FIU was the first university in the nation to sign one, WLRN has reported.

University officials say the agreements are about safety. FIU Police Chief Alexander Casas told the student newspaper PantherNOW that he wants his officers to be the point of contact for immigration enforcement on campus because they "know this community, serve this community, and are accountable to this community," according to the Caplin News report. FIU said earlier this year that "Since signing the agreement, there have been no immigration-related enforcement actions on our campuses."

The FIU case and the Aug. 23 ruling

The most closely watched dispute began at FIU on March 13, when a group of students stood up during an on-campus conversation between FIU President Jeanette Nuñez and former baseball star Alex Rodriguez. They revealed shirts reading "ICE OFF FIU," stood silently for a few minutes and then left.

Three months later, FIU charged seven of the students with violating a policy against "expressive activities" inside university buildings, a rule the Board of Trustees adopted in June 2024. The students were found responsible and ordered to record two-minute videos reflecting on the policy and their conduct. They sued with help from the ACLU of Florida and the Community Justice Project.

On Sunday, Aug. 23, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra of the Southern District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction blocking FIU from enforcing the indoor ban and from disciplining the students, WLRN reported. "Based on the evidence submitted to date, it does not appear that any Plaintiff, or anyone else wearing an 'ICE OFF FIU' T-shirt, spoke or did anything other than sit, stand, and walk," Becerra wrote. Because the order is preliminary, the lawsuit continues.

"Students have really been a leading force against this collaboration with ICE," Alana Greer, co-founder and director of the Community Justice Project, told Caplin News. "Even though the fight is not going to end tomorrow, they have not let this issue become normalized."

Protests across the state

The Caplin News review, based on accounts from students who organized and took part in the events, described protests at campuses across Florida, including the following.

In Gainesville, the University of Florida's Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter organized the Jan. 30 march down University Avenue as part of a national protest effort after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minneapolis. The report called it the largest anti-ICE protest in Gainesville history. Haley Pridgeon, vice president of UF's NAACP chapter, told the Alligator, UF's student newspaper, that the administration "just won't budge."

At Florida State, students tried to deliver their petition to the building that houses President Richard McCullough's office. Administrators first locked the doors, then agreed to set up a meeting that never happened, the report said. "They wouldn't even come out to look at the petition," said Alejandro Carralero, the FSU chapter's co-chair. A day after the group posted the university's 287(g) agreement on Instagram on Feb. 4, about 100 students protested outside the FSU Police Department.

At the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Students for a Democratic Society staged an emergency protest after Customs and Border Protection set up recruiting tables on campus. At the University of Central Florida in Orlando, students have begun weekly letter deliveries to President Alexander Cartwright, and the campus SDS chapter is working on the case of two Orlando-area students who were detained by ICE and sent to Texas. Chapter president Grisha Glozman said the students were in the country legally.

At Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton, police from the university, Boca Raton and Delray Beach were present at the September 2025 rally, according to organizer Nicholas Ostheimer, while the campus Turning Point chapter held a counter-protest with pro-ICE signs. Students at the University of South Florida have held at least three protests this year, and students at the University of West Florida in Pensacola walked out of class.

A confrontation with the next governor

The issue followed Donalds onto the campaign trail. At a Sept. 29 town hall at Florida A&M University, Donalds said Florida would comply with federal law and that there needs to be an immigration standard, according to the Caplin News report. The crowd booed, and FAMU senior Jayla Jones, president of the campus SDS chapter, pressed him on whether he would protect students from ICE. Security escorted her out.

Jones later met with FAMU's vice president of student affairs, who suggested the students rephrase their "demands" as "concerns," she said. "Now is not the time for 'concerns,'" Jones told Caplin News, citing the loss of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants. "Our concerns are demands now."

Donalds won the governor's race on Nov. 3, defeating Democrat David Jolly, and is scheduled to take office in January. He will inherit the university agreements that DeSantis set in motion.

What it means for Florida students

The faculty analysis published in April found no official reports of FIU or other Florida university police arresting students because of their immigration status, though it said a few college students had been detained off campus by local police and turned over to ICE. Students quoted by Caplin News describe the effect in other terms: immigrant and Haitian classmates who say they are afraid to leave home, attend church or go to community events.

"The First Amendment doesn't stop at the door once you walk in school," said Kriti Bastola, co-president of the ACLU chapter at FIU. "We're going to keep fighting until we feel a resolution has been made."

What's next

The FIU lawsuit remains pending after Becerra's preliminary ruling, and it is unclear whether the university will press its defense of the indoor protest ban. At UCF, organizers said more than 100 letters collected in three days would be delivered to the president's office this week. Student groups at FIU and elsewhere say their goal has not changed: getting their universities to end the 287(g) agreements.