ICE Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

If constitutional constraints are real limits on government power, their violation must sometimes justify the same defensive responses that other rights violations justify

January 22, 2026 • by Michael Gregory

If you saw an armed stranger in body armor forcing his way into your neighbor's home at dawn, dragging a screaming mother away from her children while pointing a rifle at the family, would you have the right to stop him? By any means necessary? Now the forbidden version: What if ...

The Moral Right to Defend Yourself Against ICE

North America

One Battle After Another

With ICE in Minneapolis: An eyewitness account

January 21, 2026 • by Emily Condon

On Tuesday morning, January 13, I was driving home after dropping my 9-year-old son off at school. There were ICE vehicles everywhere, I was surrounded by them on Park Ave. After a block or two of this, I parked and got out of my car. I saw that there were many ...

Migration

The Fight for International Students is a Blow to Racism

The Trump administration’s hostility towards international students is only one chapter of a longer history

July 30, 2020 • by Omer Leshem, Raphael Ogusz and Maryam Omidi

But the short episode achieved its purpose: intensifying the discomfort on international students and workers by throwing international students, college administrators, and faculty into needless turmoil. While many understood the move as intended to coerce universities to open up their campuses at a time when COVID-19 cases are soaring in ...

The Fight for International Students is a Blow to Racism

Migration

A Victory in an Unnecessary Battle

Expelling international students was not an option

July 16, 2020 • by Dwight A. McBride

Tuesday’s court hearing on the July 6 ICE guidance took all of ten minutes. That was the time it took for the U.S. Government’s counsel to inform the judge that ICE would not be moving forward with a new rule that would have expelled international students from the U.S. this ...

Education

Responding to New ICE Guideline for Higher Education

A letter from the president and the provost of The New School

July 7, 2020 • by Dwight A. McBride and Tim Marshall

Students from around the globe are a vital part of this academic community and we are unwavering in our commitment to those from outside the U.S. who choose to learn, explore, and create at The New School. We are working closely with elected officials, the Commission on Independent Colleges & Universities in New York (CICU), and national associations to ensure that any final rule reflects these important concerns. University students are already working ...

Responding to New ICE Guideline for Higher Education

History

Taking Children

An excerpt from Taking Children: A History of American Terror by Laura Briggs

June 8, 2020 • by Laura Briggs

The past stalks the present, the ghost in the machine of memory. This is why history writing matters; it gives us ways to understand the specters already among us and to assemble tools to transform our situation. Things change; the epidemic of child taking in the context of mass incarceration ...

Feature

When Democracy Wins

Residents of the small town of Springfield, Or., band together to end jail contract with ICE

July 10, 2018 • by Jewel Murphy

As a longtime ally but newly woke activist, I found myself sitting in the Springfield, Oregon, City Council chambers as they were getting ready to vote on whether to amend the city’s controversial contract to provide jail beds to ICE. First, a little bit of background. Springfield, with a population of ...

Feature

In Defense of Sanctuary

The negation of a movement

April 17, 2017 • by Abou Farman

As the lights went out on the administration’s anti-healthcare initiative, Jeff Sessions, like the ringmaster of a three-ring circus, made a sudden appearance out from the darkness to train the spotlight once more onto sanctuary cities and bark about their criminal inhabitants, otherwise known as immigrants. Sanctuary policies, he claimed, ...