Activists To Protest Northeastern University's Contract With ICE

BOSTON, MA — Students, alumni and community members are planning Wednesday to protest a $7.8 million research contract that Northeastern University has with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After news got out about the contract, some 2,000 people signed an online petition asking the university to cut all ties with the agency.

"But the Administration still isn't listening. Join us for protest at lunchtime on Wednesday demanding that NEU immediately cancel its contract with ICE and stop helping the US government violate human rights," reads the invitation to the protest put together by JP Activist Evan Greer.

Greer called the protest "an escalation, echoing the demands" of the petition.

“There is a growing movement across the country calling on institutions to use their political power to fight for human rights by cutting ties with reckless and abusive agencies like ICE,” said Greer. “Northeastern has an opportunity to lead the way, and put itself firmly on the right side of history, by answering the call from its own community to cancel this contract and refuse others like it in the future.”

As of Tuesday morning, more than 130 people indicated they planned to come to the protest on Wednesday on the school campus.

“Every University has a responsibility to determine what constitutes ethical research. At this moment in history, when families are being torn apart and children are being locked in cages, collaborating with an agency like ICE is clearly unethical,” said Lester Smiley, a Northeastern University School of Law student helping organize the protest in a statement. “The administration is trying to spin this to the press and sweep it under the rug, but that’s not going to work. We won’t stop until the University makes clear that this contract will be cancelled, and no further contracts with ICE will be pursued in the future.”

Mary Annas, an English Professor at Northeastern who also teaches refugees at Boston Medical Center called the university's connection to ICE, "however tenuous ... collusion with their human rights violations.”

The protest comes on the heels of two recent protests on the Boston Common opposing the separation of families who crossed into the southern border from Mexico to the United States, many seeking asylum bringing hundreds and then thousands of people out.

Northeastern's contract with ICE includes about $2.7 million for “exploratory methods mapping process services for big data sets.” The agreement could net the university $7.8 million and was supposed to go through August 2021. However, Renata Nyul a spokesperson for Northeastern, told Patch the professor who received the grant to work on the project would likely finish his contract in September.

The professor told Chronicle of Higher Education Magazine the purpose of the research had nothing to do with border issues, rather it was to try to better prevent illegal export of weapons of mass destruction.

Nyul told MONEY magazine the university has a contract for faculty “to look at trade data related to illegal export of weapon technologies.” She added that “Northeastern is a global institution with a global community of students, faculty and staff.”

MONEY magazine also pointed out that Northeastern's law school recently started an immigrant justice clinic in which students manage cases in partnership with the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project, a group that gives free legal services to people who have been unjustly detained or sought asylum in the U.S. Not only that, but it also signed an amicus brief opposing President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

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Jenna Fisher can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna).