Letter: Retired Faculty condemn ICE intrusion at the University of Florida
Open letter from Retired Faculty of the University of Florida to UF President Kent Fuchs, UF Provost Joseph Glover, UF Faculty Senate Chair Sarah D. Lynne, the UF Board of Trustees, and local, state, and federal representatives
President Kent Fuchs:
We, the Officers and Board of Directors of the Retired Faculty of the University of Florida, Inc. (RFUF), are writing to express our distress and disgust regarding state, local, and UF’s collusion with the outrageous if not unconstitutional visa revocations of international students, faculty, and staff at universities across the country, the Florida State University System, and the University of Florida in specific.
Particularly distressing is the covert and startling way in which this action has occurred where University of Florida police have essentially been deputized under the federal ICE 287(g) Memorandum of Agreement as “force multipliers” to detain individuals without warrants solely on suspicion of immigration violations. Affected students, faculty, and staff have reportedly received little to no formal notice, rationale, or recourse, leaving them in a state of confusion, abject terror, and uncertainty about their academic futures, legal status, and personal wellbeing.
If the University of Florida is genuinely committed to global education and is indebted to the role that thousands of international students across the State University System play in academic and research excellence, then that message could not be more strongly delivered than by your taking an expeditious and vigorous defense of our international community. Apart from the recent announcement by the UF presidential search committee of a sole candidate for the Board of Trustees’ consideration as your successor, substantial time remains in your tenure and power as Interim President and President Emeritus, and time is what we do not have in combating the metastatic symptoms of authoritarian intrusion into the internal operations of the University.
We, therefore, call upon you to act in the following ways:
- Immediately condemn and withdraw from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 287(g) Program. It is important to point out that the states of Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Mexico have no such MOAs. Furthermore, the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, and California have enacted legislation prohibiting such MOAs with ICE.
It is crystal clear to us that the UF Police Department’s published guiding principles are completely inconsistent with and anathema to any activity under an ICE 287(g) MOA. For example:
- Emblazoned on their website is the UFPD’s motto that UFPD Believes in Transparency,
- And that “…[UFPD’s] fundamental duty is to serve the community: to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality and justice [italics added for emphasis].
- Advocate for institutional transparency: Make public the scope and consequences of the current visa crisis at the University of Florida, including the number of affected students, faculty, and staff and the rationales provided for visa revocation.
- Issue guidance: Immediately contact all students, faculty, and staff who have already suffered or are at risk of visa revocation to make certain that these individuals clearly understand due process protections and are provided legal or administrative counsel if necessary. For those who have been compelled to leave the United States, make certain that UF continues to support remote participation in their education or professional role assuming they joined UF with a valid visa.
Allowing the ICE 287(g) MOA to go forward sends an unconscionably perverse message to the University community, as well as perhaps irreversibly eroding the trust expected of the UFPD while unnecessarily diverting UFPD officers from their primary mission of campus safety. Even individuals who are United States citizens run the risk of detention if cultural profiling takes hold of campus police acting with suspicion as instructed by ICE. Fear of detention could easily prevent a student from seeking medical attention, mental health treatment, or even educational support services. Most disturbing is ICE’s authority to access international student data in search of even the smallest infraction to be loosely interpreted as criminal for shameless justification of deportation.
Surely ICE and other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have sufficient authority and bandwidth to operate independently without conscripting campus police officers presumably to cast a higher resolution net over a haven where students, faculty, and staff benefit from and expand the best of what America has to offer. In short, we think it reprehensible that an agency of the University of Florida has been authorized to be complicit in ICE’s misguided and indiscriminate attempt to purge our international community. If for no other reason than respect for the core values of UF and all other Florida universities, academic freedom, due process, cultural enrichment, and global engagement for all, we implore you to withdraw from the MOA with ICE. The UF Board of Trustees should follow suit. Our international community of students, faculty, and staff deserve nothing less.
Your leadership is genuinely appreciated, and we stand ready to assist you in this urgently needed action.
Sincerely,
The Officers and Board of Directors of the Retired Faculty of the University of Florida
Pushpa Kalra (Medicine), RFUF President 2025-2026
Richard D’Alli (Medicine) Immediate Past President 2024-2025
Robin Poynor (Arts)
Charles Riggs (Medicine)
George Hochmuth (IFAS)
Anna Calluori Holcombe (Arts)
Pradeep Kumar (CLAS)
Donald Goodman (CLAS)
Diana Boxer (CLAS)
Jacqueline Basha (Barry University, Communications)
Paul Gibbs (Veterinary Medicine)
Susan Cooksey (Arts)
John Foltz (IFAS)
Steve Lodle (Santa Fe College, Communications)
Barbara McDade Gordon (CLAS)
Typical. Even in retirement they’ve lost touch with reality. 🤡🤪
🎶 Ice, ice, baby ice!🎶😃
This is woke moron global drivel. College faculty have destroyed their institutions and the country. Stay retired and STFU.
“If the University of Florida is genuinely committed to global education and is indebted to the role that thousands of international students across the State University System play in academic and research excellence, then that message could not be more strongly delivered than by your taking an expeditious and vigorous defense of our international community. Apart from the recent announcement by the UF presidential search committee of a sole candidate for the Board of Trustees’ consideration as your successor, substantial time remains in your tenure and power as Interim President and President Emeritus, and time is what we do not have in combating the metastatic symptoms of authoritarian intrusion into the internal operations of the University.”
“…and time is what we do not have in combating the metastatic symptoms of authoritarian intrusion into the internal operations of the University.”?
that’s exactly what these commi new world order DEI face diaper wearing fascist leftists have done infiltrating local governments and our school systems.
The US is the top destination for the world’s brightest students, grad students, and professional students but the most recent count showed a 13% drop in enrollments and increased recruitment of them by European countries as well as China, which is catching up by building huge numbers of universities and research institutes. They’ll pick up the slack from the DOGE Dummies cutting research money to our universities. A high number of those who come here choose to stay and add to our leadership in science, technology, and medical advances. If you don’t get the value of that for the rest of us, including our national economy, you’re too dumb to fish.
And take Steve Spurier with you!
You destroyed your argument when you listed a bunch of sanctuary states as being welcoming to illegals, people overstaying visas and citizens of countries against our freedom. Sad.
Are they really snatching legal students off the streets and disappearing them? I doubt it. Guests better fly straight or they should be subject to expulsion from the country just like anywhere else in the world. And yes the police can be used since they are getting paid to enforce the law.
It’s hard to imagine how delusional these people must be, thinking that anybody will be influenced by their opinions as “Retired UF Faculty.” They should sip their mai tais on their expensive retirement porches (excessively paid for by SOF tax payers) and realize how lucky they are to be living so well for doing so little in any concrete sense.
I’m sure you were all equally vocal about the harassment of Jewish students on campuses?
Several names on the list above are of Jewish origin.
Thank you ICE! Deport them ALL!
This “manifesto” sounds like typical Marxist dribble. I can only imagine how much harm these “professors” did indoctrinating young minds at UF. Thank God for Governor DeSantis and the death of DEI and woke policies at UF. It will take time to turn such a huge ship, but turn it we must.
Imagine being a Ph.D. and basing an argument on the premise that foreign nationals have a constitutional right to be in the US… It’s no wonder our students are so stupid nowadays.
Keisha: PHD= pile it higher and deeper.
They have a constitutional right to due process. The Bill of Rights lists “persons” in the US, not citizens.
ICE and Trump are violating due process in most of these cases and that is not arguable. All the supposed conservatives here and in MAGA who claim to be against too much government power are applauding it’s naked use by the criminal running our country.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply to illegal aliens. So your point is moot.
Stop assuming!
It applies to persons. Any human in the US is a person. Look it up.
It’s your turn to roll up your sleeve and receive take your meds. What comes around goes around or something.
This from the dude who voted for the freak Gillum
This from the guy too ashamed to tell us how many times he voted for Trump.
They think they are Harriet Tubman, running the Underground Railroad. Now some other old demented leftists can give them an award for their heroic letter. Maybe Harvey will give them a proclamation or even their own day.
Students who have overstayed their visas should be removed as quickly as possible in order to most efficiently “move on to the next one.” They don’t want that. They think everybody deserves a 1970s-style ‘rap session’ before being deported. There’s no time for that if the facts are clear (e.g., your visa expired six months ago).
What a bunch of drivel….“Affected students, faculty, and staff have reportedly received little to no formal notice, rationale, or recourse, leaving them in a state of confusion, abject terror, and uncertainty about their academic futures, legal status, and personal wellbeing.”….you know if you are not here legally. They should take up Trumps’ offer for a free flight home and then apply to come back legally…
Thank you RFUF for stepping up. I hope it helps.
Glad someone affiliated with UF is opposing the Nazi acts of ICE and Trump. Pres Fuchs once again has demonstrated his lack of gonads – see Spencer speech disaster – and is letting DeSantis and his henchman run rough shod over the very strictures which helped make UF a top public university, a perch from which it is presently falling because of them. This is all part of Unfree Florida where it’s do as the governor says or else. Top faculty don’t have to put up with rednecks deciding their tenure are already packing their bags.
Take your Meds. Your TDS is acting up again
Top faculty like gillum
If you want to leave: Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya!
Again, must be annual membership drive time since these washed up libs are spewing more garbage to draw in followers!
And this is why I as a UF Alumnus will never again donate a dollar of my hard earned money to the institution. Go woke, go broke.
Take your libtard asses and move to south FL!
Thank you Retired Faculty for your well written, moral, well reasoned letter for justice, due process, and constitutional rights of students, faculty, and staff. Thank you for speaking out courageously!
+1 Karin.
The sheep here are all for applying government power without any due process for those accused, including not just deporting them to their home country but sending them to a dictator of a foreign country who brags about no one leaving the prison they are sent to. This is cruel, ignorant, mean, debasing behavior from an administration led by a cruel, ignorant, mean, and debased president, exactly the kind of person we teach our kids not to be.
is your favorite book “Everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi”?
Nazis were actually socialists … like yourself.
The question boils down to “are people who have entered the country without following legal procedure to do so a benefit or a liability to our society?”. Comparing multiple criteria before and after waves of such entries, looking at regions of the country more or less affected, or looking at more extreme examples in, for example, Western Europe, could provide meaningful data to answer this question. This doesn’t need to be a highly charged emotional issue. Look at the data, answer the question, and make appropriate policy adjustments if indicated.
Lex, that is one valid question but it is irrelevant to violating due process and cruel and inhuman punishment which is exactly what Trump and ICE are doing with the support of immoral cretins like our governor.
As to that question, immigrants – legal and illegal – commit less crimes than native born Americans and by virtue of their hard work boost our economy. Native Americans do not produce enough new workers to man a growing economy, so we all benefit from immigrants. Since they are not legally eligible for most welfare programs or have health insurance they do not draw from our resources while most pay sales taxes and many into SS and Medicare.
The hatred and advocacy for cruel treatment of immigrants expressed by most here reflects primitive and ignorant emotions, not rationality or the empathy associated with higher civilizations. These are the people who voted in our similarly ignorant, cruel, and selfish president.
Get them out now.
As an alumni of UF, I support ICE. My support is more legitimate than some tired professor. Those that can’t do, teach.
For those finding the letter to be drivel and reflect detachment from reality, I’d suggest a look at some historical precedent. There is good reason to be concerned when local law enforcement organizations, with specific responsibilities to a local population, take on a priority of the central government. For more information, consult work by Ernst Fraenkel who practiced law in Germany from 1933 to 1938 before his flight to America.
It’s amazing that this site has attracted so many people who hate Gainesville, Alachua County, and their long term main industry, UF, nor do they have any understanding of the value of a university or respect for it’s operation and end product, which we locally benefit from beyond normality and which all humans do for it’s end products. These fools think it will benefit from more meddling by politicians and that the best faculty, who have often chosen UF and thus caused it’s rise in stature, will want their field and curriculum controlled by politicians and their career success judged and rewarded by the same. No, they won’t and neither would any of you in your work. Guess what? The best don’t have to come here and more and more they’re not while the best already here are planning their escape. UF has dropped in the rankings over the last 2 years and that will accelerate our Tallahassee Napoleon exerts his puny will more and more.
Cripes, what dumb asses.
“The best don’t have to come here and more and more they’re not while the best already here are planning their escape.”
Sounds like the UF football portal. Ackshually there’s not much difference between the sports portals and the faculty portals, but the sports players are younger and much more physically toned than the faculty are intellectually toned in anything but their tiny and mostly laughable specialties.
The funny thing is you do not have to listen to us or read the Alachua Chronicle. But you continue to self abuse yourself daily and complain about AC and it readers. It’s comical how your TDS has taken over your mind.