SANTA BARBARA – A cadre of University of California-Santa Barbara students took to the quad Thursday to protest the participation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection recruiters at a campus job fair, loudly chanting “f*ck your borders, f*ck your walls” among other slogans.
The 50 or so student protestors who lined the outside of the campus building hosting the career fair held aloft a large banner stating “Undocumented Unafraid,” and also chanted “Hey hey, ho ho – CBP has got to go.”
“We do have undocumented students here on campus who are at potential risk,” said UCSB graduate student Idalia Robles in an interview with The College Fix. “This is a very triggering event for people in those circumstances. There is no space on this campus for an organization that continues to threaten the safety of students.”
A video taken by a College Fix reporter shows students continuing to chant similar slogans – sometimes in English and other times in Spanish – as the demonstration continued into the afternoon.
Several students declined to be interviewed by The College Fix, but the group appeared to include a mix of members from several student organizations on campus. Robles said demonstrators had mostly converged to show solidarity with undocumented students.
“This event is a university endorsed event, right? And there is the presence of Customs and Border Patrol. We are in a Hispanic serving institution. One of the concerns that are very present in the Chicano-Latino-Mexicana community is that of immigration and the abuse of power at the hands of immigration officers,” she said. “[A]s someone committed to social justice, I know that this is something crucial.”
Students at the public university were notified Monday via email about career fair participants, along with a statement by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
