City College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), is once again repressing student activism. On Wednesday, April 15, City College public safety officers searched and detained three CUNY students from the socialist organization, Internationalist Group. The students from Hunter College were held in a cell — which most people on campus didn’t know existed — for over an hour, in retaliation for tabling with a socialist newspaper and gathering signatures for the faculty and staff union’s petition to create Immigrant Student Success Centers (a resource to provide support to immigrant students) on all CUNY campuses. The public safety officers gave the students summonses and threatened them with criminal charges. The following week, when students returned to pass out leaflets alerting the campus community to the repression, campus security harassed them again, backing off only when faculty members spoke in their defense.
From Left Voice, we unequivocally denounce these attempts to silence socialist and immigrant rights activists. The detainment of these students comes in the context of the increased political repression of the Palestine movement across universities. At CUNY this repression has taken the form of the crushing of the City College Gaza Solidarity Encampment in 2024, the suspension of City College student Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik, the repression of the four faculty fired for Palestine activism (popularly known as the Fired Four), and repression of Brooklyn College students and workers who were placed under investigation in 2025.
Before the 2024 encampment, City College was an open campus; since then, there has been “temporary” fencing erected at the entrances to campus, with doorways the college can close at any time. The “Henderson Rules” governing student protest on campus, originally imposed after the 1969 occupation of City College and revised after occupations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were revised once again in 2024 with new language. These revisions restrict the “time, place, and manner” of protests, prohibiting “structures,” which apparently includes folding tables. Beginning this year, there are also new rules for anyone who would like to table inside the buildings or on campus; prospective tablers must request permission from the college at least two weeks in advance.
The movement that won the reinstatement of three of the Fired Four and that is continuing to fight for the reinstatement of the Fired Fourth must also defend student activists under scrutiny from the university. In the context of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, which has seen the deployment of ICE around the country and a grassroots movement calling for ICE out in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, freedom of speech for immigrant rights is key. Students and university workers have a critical role to play in organizing with immigrant and international students. Hands off pro-Palestine and pro-immigrant student activists!
The post City College Detained Students for Tabling With an Immigrant Solidarity Petition appeared first on Left Voice.
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