Jacksonville, FL: UNF semester opens with banner drop, sanctuary campus demand
Jacksonville, FL – On the first day of their fall semester, August 18, students from the University of North Florida held a banner over the campus’s central courtyard demanding a sanctuary campus. The banner raised three demands: an end to collaboration between the UNF Police Department and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), divestment from Israel, and protections for endangered courses and programs.
The banner drop was organized by Jacksonville Students for a Democratic Society to raise awareness of events unfolding at UNF. Over the summer, UNFPD quietly joined ICE’s 287(g) task force, a program which allows officers to receive training and clearance from ICE to carry out immigration-related arrests on their own authority. Just as quietly, UNF has begun cutting courses and majors in cooperation with Florida’s state-level version of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Meanwhile, the university maintains partnerships and investments in weapons manufacturers that supply the state of Israel with arms used in the Palestinian genocide.
Students who saw the banner remarked that they did not know the university was working with ICE and were glad to have been made aware. Several students were outraged and expressed a desire to contest the collaboration. UNF has remained dismissive of student concerns, downplaying the collaboration and ignoring student requests for more information.