Seven Demands, One Deadline: Student Groups Tell the University of Arizona to Ban ICE. The Date Is October 23.
Sunday, October 18, 2026. A coalition of at least seven campus groups, led by UA Resist, has sent University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella seven demands and a deadline of 5 p.m. October 23. The first is a written commitment barring ICE and Customs and Border Protection from campus, student housing and Banner University Medical Center Tucson.
Legal Insurrection and Campus Reform call the groups left-wing, and several are. The harder question is what the university can lawfully promise, and what the coalition is actually asking it to give up.
- 7demandsAZPM’s count; sent to President Garimella and the Office of the General Counsel, per Tucson Spotlight.
- Oct. 23deadline5 p.m., per Campus Reform via Legal Insurrection; organizers are preparing for administrative silence, per AZPM.
- 0ICE incidents reported on campus this yearAt UA, ASU or NAU, per AZPM; ICE activity near campus earlier drew complaints, per Tucson Spotlight.
- 2,180ICE arrests in Arizona in JulyA peak, per the Deportation Data Project cited by AZPM; August and September data are not yet released.
Per AZPM and Tucson Spotlight, the coalition wants UA to: bar ICE and CBP from campus, housing and Banner; refuse to share student records with the Department of Homeland Security, including information protected under FERPA and HIPAA; and provide free legal representation to students and workers targeted by ICE. It also wants classroom toolkits and regular departmental training on responding to raids; removal of security cameras, facial recognition and license-plate readers such as Flock; a ban on DHS at job fairs; and abolition of the National Center for Border Security and Immigration in the Eller College of Management. Tucson Spotlight’s version of the list adds an end to funding for the AVATAR deception-detection system, so the count of seven is AZPM’s.
Graduate student Mara Short of UA Resist told AZPM the aim is so that people “can’t be kidnapped.” Ph.D. candidate Kristen Guptill-Godfrey told Tucson Spotlight: “We want a campus where the people who make the campus run get to make decisions.”
The signers are UA Resist, DeFlock Tucson, Feminists Organized to Resist, Create, and Empower (FORCE), Planned Parenthood Generation Action, Students for Socialism, the campus chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and United Campus Workers of Arizona. Campus Reform notes the university’s own site describes Students for Socialism as promoting “political education” on capitalism and socialism and organizing direct actions.
UA Resist formed in January 2025 in response to federal DEI executive orders and delivered a 3,500-signature petition to keep DEI efforts, per Tucson Spotlight. Students walked out of the Administration Building on January 28, 2026. Separately, UA College Democrats ran a petition that had drawn more than 1,100 signatures, per AZPM, and the law school’s National Lawyers Guild chapter objected to ICE recruiting through the Career Development Office.
The university has said little. AZPM reports it has not said how it would respond to ICE or CBP, did not answer the January petition, and has a policy that expects employees to comply with federal law enforcement. Garimella said in February 2025, in a statement about reviewing the university’s DEIA programs, that UA would adhere to applicable local, state and federal laws. In 2025 the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that barred immigration enforcement at places such as schools; DHS said the change was essential to “ending the invasion of the US southern border.”
State law is the open question. A.R.S. 11-1051 bars state and local officials and agencies from limiting federal immigration enforcement to less than the full extent federal law permits. The statute names state, county, city and town entities; none of the sources we reviewed says whether the University of Arizona or the Board of Regents is covered, and we do not claim it either way. A Georgetown Law Journal note raises a separate federal question, INA § 1373, for universities that adopt sanctuary pledges.
Most demands concern what happens on campus. One, and per Tucson Spotlight a second, concern border-security research. The coalition names the National Center for Border Security and Immigration in the Eller College of Management for abolition. AVATAR, a virtual-agent interview kiosk developed at the university, was being tested at Nogales when Route Fifty reported on it in 2012. We could not confirm from the sources reviewed either project’s current funding or status, and we found no recent reporting on whether CBP deploys AVATAR.
Asking a university to close a research center is a different kind of request from asking for a no-ICE policy, and nothing we reviewed says how UA or federal officials will respond. The comparison case: at Georgetown Law in January, administrators declined to remove ICE from a job fair despite a student petition, and one of two ICE departments withdrew, per the Georgetown Voice.
Documented: the seven demands (AZPM’s count), seven named signers (the Arizona Daily Star counts eight) and the October 23 deadline; the university’s lack of a public response; no ICE incident reported on UA’s campus this year.
Disputed or unsettled: whether ICE activity near campus has chilled attendance (the coalition says yes); whether state law constrains a UA sanctuary pledge.
Next: the October 23 deadline. Organizers say they are prepared for silence.
The coalition wants a written policy that bars federal immigration agents from a state university and the closure of a border-security research center. The deadline is October 23, the university has been silent, and whether state law constrains any of it is unresolved.
