May 16, 2025
To the St. John’s University Board of Trustees and Senior Management Group:
We, the undersigned members of the St. John’s University community–students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and concerned neighbors—express our strong opposition to senior administrators’ desire to partner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to create an Institute for Border Security and Intelligence Studies.
We recognize the importance of research and education in fields related to national security. However, this partnership with CBP presents grave ethical, legal, and cultural concerns—especially in light of St. John’s University’s Catholic and Vincentian mission to serve poor, immigrant, and socially marginalized people.
Refugees and migrants are our colleagues, classmates, neighbors, friends, and family members. THEY are US, not abstractions or objects for careless academic study.
United in opposition to CBP at St. John’s University, we share the following concerns:
- Undermining the University’s Mission: For decades, several hundred annual migrant deaths have been recorded near the U.S.A.-Mexico border—the world’s deadliest land migration route—as a consequence of militarized migration deterrence. Moreover, nine detainee deaths in U.S. immigration facilities have already been confirmed in 2025. Further, CBP routinely violates human rights and constitutional rights and targets the very people that St. John’s claims to “elevate.” Of particular concern, CBP violations of 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure are so widespread in border zones like New York City that the American Civil Liberties Union calls these areas “Constitution-Free Zones.” The sense of terror in our communities is particularly acute as the U.S. government has mass deported Kilmar Abrego García and hundreds of other U.S. residents to notoriously brutal Salvadoran prisons without constitutional due process. We must not be party to this systemic violence—it is a profound betrayal of our university’s Catholic and Vincentian values!
- Threats to Privacy, Civil Liberties, and Academic Freedom: Federal intelligence and border enforcement agencies wield vast surveillance capabilities. This partnership intensifies fears about government monitoring and reprisal that threaten students, faculty, and staff—especially those engaged in teaching, institutional leadership, political advocacy, or academic research targeted by federal authorities.
- Risks to Our Broader Community: A partnership with CBP would instill extreme fear in members of our community, including among those employed by third-party vendors and in our surrounding neighborhoods. This relationship would increase risks of surveillance, abuse, and destruction of families. The announcement has already eroded the trust and safety that St. John’s should foster in Jamaica, Queens and the greater New York City metropolitan area.
- Lack of Community Involvement and Transparency: Administrators did not consult with the broader university community before announcing their intent to partner with CBP. Whereas many university decisions are made unilaterally, it is in matters of such serious social and ethical consequence that shared governance and community-wide deliberation are most critical.
In late January, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ended limits on immigration enforcement on college campuses, creating major risks to free speech, to freedom of assembly, and to academic freedom at universities. By February, Catholic institutions like Santa Clara University reported that federal raids were increasingly impacting campus life. Private institutions like the University of Southern California and Northeastern University provided detailed protection protocols and prepared campus communities for encounters with federal agents. On February 12th, St. John’s administrators emailed a third-party fact sheet about federal law and best university practices, but committed to no specific protocols. By spring, federal immigration officers had detained numerous students at U.S. universities, including Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow and professor at Georgetown University, Mohsen Mahdawi, an undergraduate student at Columbia University, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, all in retaliation for their political activities and without evidence of any crimes or violations of U.S. immigration law. In 2020, a Northeastern University student with a valid visa was even deported without being provided a reason for the deportation. Because authorized residency offers little protection against CBP corruption, and against violations of civil and international law, we need strong university protocols that protect our communities.
Therefore, we demand of the Board of Trustees and Senior Management Group:
- Immediate termination of the partnership with Customs and Border Protection.
- Disclosure of the full terms of St. John's University's Memorandum of Understanding with CBP, including provisions involving access to administrators, campus technologies, curriculum, research, and student/employee data.
- Formation of an independent oversight committee of students, faculty, and staff to monitor existing St. John’s University collaborations with federal immigration agencies.
- Implementation and publicizing of strict data protection measures to prevent surveillance, data extraction, and backdoor access by any external agency without transparent, lawful justification.
- Affirmation of administrators’ commitments to academic freedom and freedom of political expression, explicitly stating that no member of the community will be surveilled or penalized for nonviolent expression or for scholarship critical of government or university policy.
Amid repressive U.S. government actions, a halted U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and mass deportations, this CBP partnership does not reflect “Catholic, Vincentian, metropolitan, and global” values.
We say, “NO CBP at SJU!!” The human costs are too high!
In Solidarity and Service,
[The undersigned]
