ICE comes to USU

Pictured above is Ricardo Velazquez, the guest speaker representing ICE. Photo courtesy by the Institute of Government and Politics. 

Ricardo Velazquez remembers what it was like becoming a United States citizen. As an Argentine immigrant who came to the U.S. about 30 years ago, he remembers the lengthy paperwork and costly process of applying for citizenship.

After getting his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah and his graduate degree from American University, Velazquez worked for the United States Senate, United States Department of Agriculture and now works for Department of Homeland Security in the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement division, specifically in the Office of Congressional Relations.

And on Monday, Velazquez took the floor at the Institute of Government and Politics monthly Pizza and Politics event to discuss the internship opportunity recently unveiled for USU students interested in working with ICE.

“Wherever you go, whatever agency you do, I guarantee is going to change the way you see things in the future,” Velazquez said of any internship in Washington, D.C. “If you ever have the opportunity for an internship, any program, please think about it and take the chance of doing that.”

The IOGP has recently added ICE to its list of political internships, joining a list filled with local, state and federal government internships.

“We are starting a new internship program with ICE in the fall,” said Karsyn Dahl, IOGP recruitment and programs coordinator. “We’re kind of using this as an info session for an interview and just what ICE does in general.”

Velazquez presenting on Monday brought controversy due to the nature of ICE and the hard-lined immigration stance taken by President Donald Trump and his administration.

“I personally believe that this is a rather divisive step, especially given the currently political climate,” said Josh Johnson, the USU Student Association diversity and organizations vice president-elect. “They’re a member of a government branch and so I get all the logistics behind it, but at the end of the day I think it’s insensitive to be recruiting students to work specifically for immigration services at a time where the president wants nothing more than to run on, basically the campaign of white people need to be against non-white people.”

Johnson said that whether the IOGP realizes it or not, that’s how it is going to read for diverse and minority students.

Johnson, a Mexican-American student whose mother is a Mexican immigrant, said white students “shouldn’t feel ashamed” for attending the presentation, but should try and understand the perspective of a minority student.

“There are students who attend this school who, previous to last year, were protected under DACA,” he said. “There are also students who attend this school whose parents or grandparents are immigrants, whether that’s legally or illegally, and the whole purpose of that agency, at least under the Trump administration, has become really a deportation machine.”

When concerns of the validity and humanity of ICE were raised, Velazquez said the organization simply enforces the laws aiming to keep the U.S safe.

“Our responsibility is to enforce the laws of the United States, and I think you go down a slippery slope when you pick and choose which laws to enforce,” he said.

Velazquez compared an open door immigration policy to hosting a party.

“As everybody who has thrown a party knows, somebody is going to crash your party,” he said. “Somebody who wasn’t invited.”

Though Velazquez described ICE as a fully-constitutional law enforcement agency, Johnson said inviting them to speak on campus creates an unsafe feeling for minorities.

“By going there, it’s an automatic signal to all those minority students that this is not as safe of a university as it could be.”

-alisonberg28@gmail.com
@Alison__Berg