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When President Donald Trump deployed U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement to Los Angeles in June, the effects were immediate and disastrous.
Anyone with their finger on the pulse of current events was instantly inundated with heart-wrenching footage of mothers being torn away from their children, masked agents tackling unarmed street vendors. Some Americans applauded the purge. Far more were stirred into outrage.
That very afternoon, protests broke out in various LA neighborhoods against the widely unpopular sweeps, which conflicted with LA’s reputation as a sanctuary city. Over the following days, protests spread to major cities across the country. Crowds assembled in New York, Chicago, Seattle and outside Portland’s ICE facility, where agents regularly accosted protestors with tear gas and less-lethal weapons.
Eugene, however, remained as peaceful as ever. If you strolled down 13th Avenue near the University of Oregon campus or made the trek to Autzen Stadium, you would see no trace of the unrest galvanizing the nation.
It can be deceptively easy to think that the Trump administration’s reign of terror hasn’t permeated Eugene, a relatively small and tranquil city where the biggest disruption is usually a raucous party on frat row. It can be even easier to assume that the UO, with its flashy new buildings and well manicured lawns, would be unscathed by the events rocking the outside world.
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
As a UO junior, I have witnessed many pressing social issues divide the campus community. I saw last year’s pro-Palestine encampments unfurl across the Knight Library lawn, and I saw university employees tear them down. I watched United Academics and student worker unions picket outside Johnson Hall as wealthy administrators convened within. I have heard the megaphone-muddled shouts as students clash with anti-abortion protesters in the Erb Memorial Union amphitheater. In this era of political upheaval, there are myriad issues of profound importance to UO students, but few have had such a concrete and pervasive impact as the deployment of ICE.
This spring, I conducted interviews for a Daily Emerald article about student workers who stayed no the job during the student worker strike. When I asked why they chose not to strike, many of them volunteered the type of explanations I had expected: disagreements with union leadership, fear of professional retaliation, housing situations that were reliant on their provision of labor. Others, however, expressed a concern I hadn’t foreseen. They were afraid of being deported.
Just a week earlier, the Department of Homeland Security under the new Trump administration had revoked the visas of four UO international students based on unsubstantiated criminal charges, threatening to deport them if they did not leave the country within 15 days. While these visas were reinstated and the deportations were blocked by an Oregon judge, the scandal nonetheless sent a chill rippling across campus. The incident revealed a frightening truth: Even here, on our very own campus, noncitizens were being scrutinized.
While these UO students avoided detainment, many members of our community have not been so lucky. As of Nov. 19, at least 11 people from Lane County have been arrested by ICE and detained in Portland or Tacoma.
The fear has been palpable. Classmates have confided in me that they are worried about their green-card-holding parents. Friends have fretted over relatives who live in anti-sanctuary states. International students have canceled plans to visit ailing family members in their home countries for fear that they will be unlawfully detained upon reentry. None of these students are undocumented, but that doesn’t matter — they are afraid because their names, their ethnicities and their passports mark them as a target.
While everyone’s primary concern should be the wellbeing of ICE’s victims, it would be a disservice not to acknowledge the long-lasting financial ramifications that these arrests have set into effect. Even if ICE was disbanded tomorrow and Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, resigned in disgrace, it would take our school years to recover from the damages. The UO has already seen a sharp decline in international enrollment during the 2025-26 school year, as prospective students intimidated by the immigration crackdown have canceled or withdrawn their applications.
The continual exodus of international and out-of-state students — our two highest-paying student demographics — will negatively impact in-state students, too, as the loss of this vital tuition money will compound our school’s financial problems. To put it bluntly: If you have a child planning to attend UO, the persecution of immigrants will directly impact the academic opportunities at their disposal.
I wish I could report a feeling of widespread empowerment, but this could not be further from the truth. Students who were previously active in the pro-Palestinian encampments have told me that, due to harassment from the university administration, the police or the federal government, they are afraid to participate in acts of further peaceful protest. There is a sense of confusion and trepidation as laws shift, blur and erode entirely.
Many of us feel demoralized. Passionate protests against the genocide in Palestine and calls for UO leaders to divest have been fruitless. Our tuition dollars and taxes still fund morally reprehensible offensives, both abroad and on American soil. While anti-ICE students and student groups still try to donate money, attend protests, share information and volunteer our time, we often feel that there is nothing we can do in the face of such a lawless and undemocratic assault on immigrants.
However, most of this strife is invisible to onlookers. From the outside, life at UO appears as carefree as ever. Students still stress over finals and study in coffee shops. There are still football games, house shows and the “performative male” contests my generation delights in.
No matter how normal our campus might seem, I implore noncollegiate readers to remember that UO is a part of the broader community, not isolated from it. Students here are plagued by the same issues that plague all Oregonians. Our SNAP benefits hang in limbo. Medicaid cuts have left many of us uninsured. Students in ROTC struggled to cover expenses during the government shutdown. We worry about the atrocities our tax dollars are funding. Our tuition and rents spike while our wages stay low.
And, crucially, immigration enforcement affects us too.
