More than a month after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Morristown, its aftershocks can still be felt. For a city with a high percentage of immigrants and Latino population, the raid has left a deep psychological impact; Laundromats and stores frequented have stayed empty.
Meanwhile, ICE has continued its incursions, looking for the next opportunity to attack. Multiple ICE sightings in and around Morristown have been reported on social media platforms since the raid took place. While ICE has not yet attacked Madison—a town with a much higher household income and fewer immigrants—its vehicles have been spotted circling around town.
Unlike other larger, more comprehensive universities across the country, ICE has not yet requested its spot at Drew’s career fair. Nonetheless, Drew could still stand out as a target in the traditional sense of the word. Drew has a large concentration of students of color, with Hispanic students making up 16.6% of the College of Liberal Arts population.
It should likewise not be forgotten that the Department of Homeland Security officially rescinded protections given to school campuses on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of the Trump administration. This gesture is largely symbolic in marking the administration’s distaste for immigrants: ICE has been breaking the law, and there is very little people can do to stop them.
Across the country, thousands of testimonies, videos and photos of ICE’s violation of the Constitution and people’s democratic rights have been recorded and widely circulated. Both non-citizens and citizens have been arbitrarily detained and brutalized.
While DHS officials cherry-pick a small number of violent criminals to justify the mass arrests and racial profiling, statistics from the American Civil Liberties Union have shown that 74% of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions of any kind, as with the case of the Morristown raid: notably among the arrested was a 17-year-old high school senior.
What does this mean for Drew? One takeaway, perhaps, is the importance of building community with each other and sharing resources. It is important to educate students, faculty and staff alike on their rights and appropriate response towards ICE.
After all, there have been cases in which a wrong response lands someone with legal status in ICE detention for days or even weeks, causing disruption to one’s life and emotional trauma. Forming rapid-response teams of legal observers would also greatly assist those in need.
-After all, ICE serves merely as a tool to divide people based on their immigration status and skin color, and it’s more urgent than ever for students to get together in defense of their classmates, as well as their own democratic rights that are being stripped away with every illegal ICE raid. Building a community is not an empty expression. On the contrary, it requires concrete organization.
Each one of us might feel a sense of hopelessness in the face of the ICE offensive. But together, with ten, fifty, a hundred and a thousand people out there for each other, we can and will protect ourselves and our neighbors. It is time to get organized, build a strong immigration defense coalition in every corner of the campus and melt ICE with our own love and trust.
by James Lim
