Border Protection recruiters drop out of UCI job fair amid opposition

Recruiters for the U.S. Border Patrol’s parent agency pulled out of a job fair at UC Irvine this week after an outcry from opponents who said their presence would be disrespectful and offensive to undocumented students.

An online petition demanding that UCI boot U.S. Customs and Border Protection from the event gathered more than 650 signatures within 24 hours of its posting Monday.

“The undocumented community is directly affected by deportation and detention policies that are carried out by Border Patrol, and having Border Patrol agents on campus is a blatant disregard to undocumented students’ safety and well-being,” the petition stated.

A day after the petition went live, federal officials decided to withdraw from Thursday’s job fair.

“The decision was made by us, not UC Irvine,” said Customs and Border Protection spokesman Jaime Ruiz. “We didn’t want to create any controversy or any distraction.”

Amy Yu, a 21-year-old fourth-year student at UCI, started the petition after flipping through a job fair brochure and seeing that the agency was scheduled to attend.

“I was shocked,” said Yu, who is undocumented. She came to the United States with her mother and two siblings from Hong Kong without papers.

Yu said she felt that welcoming Border Patrol agents to campus would undercut any commitment to diversity and inclusion professed by UCI.

“The fact that they’re inviting them is already an indicator that they don’t care about a certain group of students on campus,” she said.

Her petition accused federal agents of racial profiling and unjust killings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The border itself is also an arbitrary boundary line that serves to control migration and contributed to the notion of ‘illegal’ immigration, a term that dehumanizes our right to migrate freely and live as human beings to survive,” it stated.

Campus spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon said “UCI is committed to bringing a full spectrum of employers to campus to meet with our student population. The career fair featured 90 different corporations and agencies, giving all students a wide variety of employment options to explore. It’s up to individual students to determine which employers may or may not align with their diverse talents, values and interests.”

About 500 undocumented students are enrolled at UCI, which has a total student population of about 30,000, Lawhon said.

Though Customs and Border Protection dropped out of the job fair, it still will post job listings through UCI’s career center, according to Lawhon.

Yu did not attend the job fair, saying it would have been useless to her because she lacks a work permit.

She called Customs and Border Protection’s withdrawal a good, if only symbolic, step for the campus.

“It was a small victory, I guess,” she said.