New Haven, Connecticut

This week at Yale University, students received emails from their department heads professing “Support and Solidarity” as the threat of deportations beckons. Faculty issued new instructions to students on what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows up on campus: ask for an officer’s credentials and call the campus police to try and delay detention.

Before this week, there was no mention of ICE in student immigration resources. However, following the high-profile detainment of students at other universities, Yale is preparing to be next. Emails said the university in New Haven, Connecticut would not allow ICE officers in any “non-public” spaces, but that it would “comply” if the agency issues a warrant. Access to academic buildings, except libraries and museums, is now restricted to student ID holders. Students on visas, the emails said, must carry their immigration documents with them at all times and have their passport easily available. One department head wrote: “We want to affirm, unequivocally, our support for you — not only as students and scholars but as individuals with the right to think, speak, and act according to your conscience.”

All this serves to demonstrate the Trump administration’s widening presence on America’s elite campuses. ICE officers were not previously allowed on university grounds, but changing this policy is part of the President’s larger crackdown on colleges with significant pro-Palestinian protests.

Yale’s emails anticipate a crackdown like that witnessed at Columbia, where pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained last month. Though Khalil has a green card, and was arrested as a threat to national security, he faces deportation for failing to state that he was an unpaid intern at the United Nations. At Tufts last week, PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was dragged into an unmarked van by masked ICE officers. She has yet to be charged with an offence.

Amid swirling rumours of an ICE sighting on campus, an international student at Yale described himself as “terrified” and “afraid to walk alone” for fear of abduction by officers. Another told me she was “seriously considering” leaving America. Almost a thousand Yale students turned up to a “know your rights” webinar this week, while student organisers have sought out pro-bono lawyers.

Alongside threats of withdrawing funding for universities, ICE officers and the State Department are going above college administrators to deport students, often without informing the universities. Trump is keeping good on his promise, having posted on 4 March that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”

Yale is preparing for a federal funding investigation like the one Columbia recently faced; and the week before the ICE emails were sent out, administrators asked all department chairs and directors of graduate studies to send a report of the DEI initiatives in their programmes. In light of Trump’s plan to review billions in funding for Harvard, Yale officials believe that their college could be next. As Yale’s president Maurie McInnis said on Wednesday: ‘“We will always follow the federal law. We have to.”

Even on campuses without an ICE presence, over the past week hundreds of international students across the country have received emails from the State Department asking them to “self-deport”, citing social media posts and involvement in campus protests as reasons for their visa being revoked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had revoked more than 300 visas, telling reporters: “They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine our universities. I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.”

What increasing ICE presence on college campuses shows is that the administration doesn’t need to make many deportations to scare away students who were involved in Palestine protests. The threatening sight of high-profile deportations across the country is sufficient deterrent even for those who haven’t committed a crime. Yale is far from an isolated case: universities across America are locking their doors and sending out emails, preparing for the arrival of ICE. More deportations surely lie ahead.