We’re all aware that the Secret Police swept in and sent a Tufts graduate student to a concentration camp in Louisiana. They also detained Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University (we also know that Columbia is chickenshit).
Now it’s the University of Minnesota’s turn.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday detained a University of Minnesota graduate student at an off-campus residence, according to an email to students and staff from the University of Minnesota.
We here at the University of Minnesota learned about this through an email message sent out by the administration.
Dear students, faculty and staff,
We are writing to inform you about a deeply concerning situation involving one of our international graduate students at the University of Minnesota.
We learned that, on March 27 at an off-campus residence, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained a graduate student enrolled on our Twin Cities campus. We are actively working to gather more details about this incident.
In cases like this, the University takes steps to ensure students are connected to internal resources and support, such as Student Legal Service and International Student and Scholar Services.
The University had no prior knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities before it occurred.
It is important to note that our campus departments of public safety, including UMPD, do not enforce federal immigration laws, and our officers do not inquire about an individual’s immigration status. Their focus remains on public safety, fostering trust and maintaining strong relationships across the University community.
As we work to gather more information, please know the University has information, resources and FAQs about federal immigration policies available on the Rapid Response website.
We understand how distressing this news may be for members of our University community. If you or someone you know needs mental health support during this time, please visit mentalhealth.umn.edu, which connects you to resources across all five campuses.
Rebecca Cunningham
PresidentCalvin Phillips
Vice President for Student AffairsMercedes Ramírez Fernández
Vice President for Equity and Diversity
They’re trying to gather more information, but the primary purpose of this email was to say “we didn’t do anything, it’s not our fault!” I’d like to know what the university is preparing to do in response, and how they intend to stop future abductions of our students by the criminals running ICE and DHS. Because that’s what’s happening: the federal government is trying to intimidate our universities by random kidnapping of our students, and we need to take strong positive action to prevent it.
It doesn’t help that the University of Michigan and Harvard, along with many others, have been in a mad scramble to surrender to the totalitarians.
Here’s a handy list of students who have been targeted for harassment and deportation. See if you can tell what they all have in common.
That is true of a lot of police departments across the USA.
The ICE thugs aren’t well liked or welcome in a lot of places.
This is a state law in Oregon and Washington.
Sounds like a good idea.
My old university is 12% foreign students. This is thousands of them and they are an important part of the university since they pay full tuition.
If you look at Mano’s post this morning, China is the place to go for research.
Masked, hooded abductors, showing no clear signs of legal authority should be immediately shot. It’s the American way!
Not if you want to be somewhere you can criticise the government without being kidnapped/locked up/deported/disappeared.
Universities are a good place to find motivated and intelligent people to raise up as anti-Americans. They’ll grow and come to power just as the climate disaster weakens the US. This looks like a bad idea.
The truly sick thing about this, above and beyond that it is happening, is that if/when we stop it ICE are likely to pull the, “Just following orders.”, card, and depending on which sort of stupid Democrats, or others, end up in the position to decide what to do about the organization will, to “keep the peace”, maybe abolish it, and fire them, but not do what they right thing would be and say, “Following unlawful orders, when you should know damn well they are illegal, unconstitutional and violate all of the rights of the people you arrested, is not a valid claim of, ‘just following orders’. Someone following those kinds of orders would be court-martialed in the military under any circumstance, and possibly shot for it if there was a real war going on. The least you deserve if revocation of any right to work for any federal, state or city agency as law enforcement, and that is after time in jail for doing ‘following illegal orders’.”
But, like I said, the odds of this actually being the outcome, instead of the agency being shut down (hopefully), a few people at the top getting some jail time (maybe), would be all these SS turning around and getting hired as f-ing cops.
I just heard (and hope it is true) that the president? of Columbia Univ. resigned as a result of all the student protests. These university administrators are, with few exceptions, just corporate business focused, ideologue, whores, who have no interest in providing quality education.
@4 So not the usa either.
What? Korean-American? How can they do this?
Why would they? The ruling class wants this to happen, and the universities will implement ruling class policy.
Universities are and always have been concerned about bringing up the future ruling class and protecting ruling class interests by serving as an anti-populist, elitist bulwark against any dissent. Look at any troubled, revolutionary times in history and you’ll find the universities were on the wrong side, issuing predictably conservative wisdom for that moment and formulating jusifications for atrocities. So it will go this time.
Explaining this to the popular demographic reading this blog feels like explaining to a fish that it’s swimming in water. You want academia to do something that goes against everything it is as an institution. The people getting arrested know academia doesn’t have their back. If people fight back it will be in spite of the universities, and if people successfully fight back the universities will be dissolved. Anything short of that leaves these institutions intact for next time, when they will protect elite interests and quash any dissent to an anti-populist ruler.
beholder, your transparent lies and distortions are quite evident.
You:
An actual university:
“The University had no prior knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities before it occurred.
It is important to note that our campus departments of public safety, including UMPD, do not enforce federal immigration laws, and our officers do not inquire about an individual’s immigration status. Their focus remains on public safety, fostering trust and maintaining strong relationships across the University community.
As we work to gather more information, please know the University has information, resources and FAQs about federal immigration policies available on the Rapid Response website.
We understand how distressing this news may be for members of our University community. If you or someone you know needs mental health support during this time, please visit mentalhealth.umn.edu, which connects you to resources across all five campuses.”
@11 John Morales
Your chosen snippet does not inspire me with confidence. It sounds rather like the boilerplate message in the middle of a phone tree that tells me: “Customer Service takes your concerns very seriously, please stay on the line.” Exactly what I would expect from an institution trying to defuse and demobilize popular unrest.
“Your chosen snippet does not inspire me with confidence.”
It’s not intended to inspire your confidence, it’s the actual message from the University.
And it very much contradicts your claim.
You may ostensibly not think that missive constitutes support, but it does.
Your stupid attempts at spin do not work on me; you are basically saying “that’s what a guilty person would say!”, which requires ignoring that’s also what an innocent person would say.
(You are indistinguishable from an agent provocateur — and for very good reason, I reckon)
I guess my biography might end up being titled ‘gullible’s travels’. But, I have always wanted and hoped that universities (and all educational institutions) would consider a primary function of theirs is to provide a protected* forum for honest, open, responsible discussion of all topics and viewpoints. I detest that universities have, in too many cases, swallowed the toxic bait that they should be a ‘for-profit’ organization being ‘run like a business’.
*this must include accepting responsibility to protect students and faculty from thuglike behavior by jackbooted outside ‘enforcers’.
How is U of M even supposed to prevent ICE arrests off campus? Even a large school with a real police department isn’t running around patrolling all of Minneapolis. They have a limited jurisdiction. It’s hard to imagine anything they can do to stop arrests, though I’d certainly say they should be drastically increasing funding and resources at the Student Legal Service. What the kidnapped students need are lawyers, and I doubt that they’ve been staffed with this kind of thing in mind up to now.
shermanj: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday detained a University of Minnesota graduate student at an off-campus residence, according to an email to students and staff from the University of Minnesota.”
Also, short of physical violence, how are universities supposed to protect people from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials — you know, the people you call .
(You’d do better to temper your idealism with at least a leavening of pragmatism, I think, and a healthy dose of factuality)
beholder @ 10
“Universities are and always have been concerned about bringing up the future ruling class and protecting ruling class interests by serving as an anti-populist, elitist bulwark against any dissent.”
Only a fucking idiot who has never attended a university could fart out something this blindly and ideologically stupid.
Why are you still here? You got the government you wanted, fuck off and rejoice.
@ Morales
Off topic admittedly, but it’s curious. When did you forget how to blockquote?
,(Also you’re overusing the gumby text. It severely dilutes the effect.)
“Off topic admittedly, but it’s curious. When did you forget how to blockquote?”
In an alternate reality, Silentbog.
(Most people understand that quotation marks indicate a quotation, and that when those marks encompass a span of text, it marks it as a block)
I was here before you were, Bobiferant.
Yeah, I remember when SGBM complained my techniques could be homeopathic.
—
How’s your attempted harassment of me going, Sb?
@10. beholder : Youar eone of thsoe who made this happen so have ZERO credibility here -& if you did you blew it again with your transparently ignornat comment. Got buyers remorse for what you did to Kamala Harris yet?
@10. beholder : You are one of those who made this MuskTrump regime happen so you thus have ZERO credibility here – & if you did still have any shred of credibility (which, again, you don’t) you blew it again with your transparently ignorant comment about unis there.
Got any buyers remorse for what you did to Kamala Harris yet? Still think you made the right choice between the two and ONLY two alternatives the USA had last – emphasis on last – election?
How’s Trump working out for that genocide in Gaza you falsely claimed to care about that he has made WORSE and expanded exactly as I and others warned you and also is enabling other genocides as we speak and is – again as we fucking warned you about!
As if you,Vicar and the other Putridity Disunity undermining Faux Leftwing mob actually honestly cared about the countless and ever growing number of people, all human individuals who are now suffering ever more and worse because of your words and actions.
Beholder, you are the ethical, rhetorical, human equivalent of shit I’d scrape off my shoe & I’m not alone here in that assessment of you – at all.
@ StevoR
I’m honestly getting the impression that if there were a trolley problem where on one track there’s a person who voted for Trump, and on the other track 27 didn’t but also didn’t vote Kamala, you’d throw the switch. X-D
Get over it dude. You’re like the guy who would have blamed conscientious objectors for Hitler.
Also, did you know not everyone is motivated by how much “credibility” they have amongst your buddies, but by whether was they are saying is true? Shocking, I know.
There is also something weird at Bloomington, IN. A professor there had his house raided and the professor has been “disappeared” (or so it seems at the moment). I haven’t been able to find any updates.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sketchy-first-reports
@23. Silentbob : Do you actually think beholder spoke truth? Do you agree w them?
Do you think a vote for anyone OTHER than Kamala helped anyone other than Trump?
That the ONLY way to stop Trump last USoA election was to vote in any way other than FOR Kamala? That undermining and attacking the ONLY alternative to Trump was a good idea or in any way useful or helpful in the circumstances we had then?!?
^ PS. Silentbob : Did you really NOT notice that beholder ONLY ever attacked the Democratic party and their people and NEVER focused on the alternative that was Trump and the real threat of the Fascist Repug-y-klan party and the damage they would and are now doing to the USoA and the rest of us? Has beholder ever even said a bad word about Trump and actually fucking nazi copying burning dumpster fire douchecanoe side of American politics that they have enabled so horribly, disgustingly well with their divide and conquer faux leftist cow chutney crap?
That stopping Trump and his puppetteers had to be the priority given the actual options Amnercians once had? But he’d rather criticise and attack the alternatiev and ONLY them? Suss as fuck yeah? Aren’t you smarter than that?
PPS. Oh & are you, Silentbob, willing to not respond to and ignore and just leave John Morales alone? I haven’t yet seen any answer from you on that question Ikwp asking you. Every time you just seem to vanish and never reply. Are you mentally capable and willing to just let him FN be?
FFS. It is well past my bedtiem and i really canot type for shit. Sorry folks.*
.* Some exceptions aside.
Whatever happened to real Gumby quotes?
I miss strangegods.
I wonder if he’s still alive.
ॐ
@16 John Morales pointed out
(1)the U of Minn Student was at an off-campus residence. And, John asked
(2)how universities are supposed to protect people ‘short of violence’. And
(3)suggested my idealism was not practical.
I reply: All good points John. However,
(1) in the past university police forces had full ‘cooperative agreements’ with local police. The LAPD cars had a saying on them ‘to protect and serve’, referring to the populace. So, (idealism warning) it used to be that the role of both was to protect people in their jurisdiction. However, it is likely that police are now deciding to support the magat ‘secret ICE police’ illegally kidnapping people.
(2)major universities are like small cities and have their own ‘campus police’ forces. They are responsible for preventing crimes against students and faculty. That should include having sufficient ‘dissuasive ‘ enforcement power on their ‘turf’ to prevent Federal jackbooted ICE thugs from being able to roam freely, kidnapping anyone they want.
(3)I take your point about ‘tempering’ idealism. In most cases, I try to be as practical in my idealism as I can without abandoning my principles; which would make idealism just useless fluff words. And, over many decades I’ve found that often ‘tempering’ becomes fatal compromising of ideals. Just, look at upchuck schumer and his ‘when it is convenient and safe’ idealism, selling out the populace.
Thanks, for the expanded perspective, John. But, as I wrote, my biography might end up being titled ‘gullible’s travels’. My idealism is an integral element of the principles of our organization, which I won’t abandon.
@22.Silentbob : I think the “trolley probnlem” is hypothetical bullshit. You tink it is valid?
Do you think Beholder et al didn’t throw us all under that metaphorical tram / trolley last year? They did.
I still think PZ should ban beholder, silentbob and all the other fascism enablers. They should not be given any platform to spread their lies no matter how miniscule it seems. They will never change their tune and they will always repeat their BS no matter what. There’s no point in allowing them to stay.
As an irregular visitor, I find this thread saddening. The most interesting part to me was about the non-action of the university police. At my university (Oxford) back in the day (1970), the cops did largely defer to the university authorities. I and a couple of friends were accused (accurately) of possessing hash, almost certainly because someone we did not know well was busted and finked on us, but the cops just said go ye and confess to the Dean and we’ll forget about it this time. So we did, and they did. Which was wildly unfair to the non-university dope smokers, and certified my distaste for the authorities, even though I benefitted. I moved to California a few years later largely because it seemed to be a place where I could be myself.
So I don’t want anyone to get busted for political opinions, however noisily expressed, whether I agree with them or not.
I do appreciate your thoughtful response, shermanj.
BTW, in the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/30/ice-detains-minnesota-university-graduate-student
Where is PZ?
In Morris, Minnesota, BB.
While you’re being a wiseacre, the rest of us are noticing a)
b) That PZ is an outspoken progressive professor in the US as well who normally posts two or three new articles a day, and
c) PZ has gone 24 hours now without posting anything,
and getting worried.
I suppose you’ll be trying to start an insult-fight using schoolyard sophistry while everyone else is running and screaming during the Apocalypse, too? :/ Go off somewhere and grow yourself a working sense of priorities please.
[meta]
Nah. Panic mode is for other people, BB. Not warranted at all right now.
Be aware PZ has a real life. A job. Things to do, activities to undertake, a life to live.
Things happen, moods change, who knows what?
—
Be aware that this blog is his hobby. His avocation. He pays for it himself.
Desirable, but not necessary.
We — those who read and participate — benefit from it.
Much more than he, in aggregate.
(So, please don’t put the onus on him to satisfy you, as you do with your frequent whinges about the codebase here)
Back in the day, he started the original ur-blog in his lab as community outreach, then he moved to scienceblogs where he acquired a degree of fame (various awards, and of course Crackergate), then he and Ed Brayton set FtB up to get away from selling out to corporate interests when SB sold out. A principled stance.
(Weirdly, perhaps, it was the name got me to check it out, back in 2005)
Bekenstein Bound, did you read the link?
That doesn’t match PZ’s description.
Ah, I recall crackergate. Happened in my state.
As for PZ last I heard he had a huge hole dug through his yard to fix a water leakage. Hopefully he has water back on. I’d imagine taking a Sunday off from posting after (or still during?) that ordeal is to be expected. Or maybe he has other stuff going on involving not being online.
Well he posted to Bluesky earlier today.
Or the inciting incident leading into crackergate/wafergate happened at a Florida university.
In the late 1940’s and early 50’s anti-communist teacher purges happened at universities across the nation for refusals to sign oath’s against communism; the oath was imposed by the board of Regents. University’s like California Berkeley fired over a hundred employees for not signing (most did). Some got their jobs back some didn’t. I personally knew one who didn’t; he gifted me the book ‘Readings In Western Civilization’ Knoles-Snyder 1951. UC-Berkeley recovered nicely, it has a higher than average16% international students population, plenty of opportunity for doj or Ice misdeeds; although, I hardly think these recreants will confine them to international students. I hope we get through this; again. The book is pretty good.
There was also the notorious Hollywood Black List of suspected commies.
This was just before my time so I’ve heard of it but didn’t know much about it.
Another typical example of a witch hunt.
Anyone can be a suspected witch.
Witches can be anything, commies, feminists, women, Progressives, Wokes (whatever they are), DEIs (non cis het males), Muslims, Trans, LGBTIQAs, climatologists, scientists, etc..
I’m a witch.
So are a lot of you.
eastexsteve, I pasted you into copilot (freebie AI chatbot):
“In the 1960s and 70s, universities across the nation faced purges of faculty and staff for their involvement in anti-war protests and civil rights activism, as administrations and external political pressures sought to suppress dissent and maintain order during a period of social upheaval”.
I’m seeing the trajectory of things, and I reckon you will.
End of the day, people do prefer better over worse, and right now the only impediment to that realisation is ideological submission.
“In the 1980s and 90s, universities across the nation faced challenges in academic freedom and employment due to cultural wars over topics like affirmative action, race relations, and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ rights in academic discourse, as administrations and external pressures sought to navigate the shifting societal norms and values.”
(Quoth Copilot)
This is a hard time for a huge number of people.
If you aren’t a cis het white male GOP voter, it is going to be a hard time for you.
Harder for some than others.
Right now, it has to be difficult for the over 1 million foreign university students in the USA. The number from Google is 1.1 million and I’m sure many of those are wondering why they are here right now.
One of my long time old friends and colleagues is having a rough time right now.
He is Japanese American, born after World War II.
Born late enough that he was never in the US concentration camps.
His parents, relatives, and a lot of his ethnic community were though and these days it is bringing up a lot of memories about what the USA is capable of.
While Trump is the proximate cause, a lot of the US’s impending Gestapo problem can still be blamed on the Democrats as well. The police riots during the George Floyd protests happened under Trump 1.0, and there were a whole four years of Biden where the bad officers who assaulted random civilians, abducted people in plainclothes, violated the rights of citizens, could have been addressed.
But they weren’t. Because, fundamentally, the Democrats are just as happy as the Republicans to have an unaccountable security state (somewhat) at their beck and call, to have deniable officers and off-the-books intelligence programs that they can use to accomplish whatever antisocial goals they happen to have. Obama and Biden were perfectly happy to let the intelligence/security state fester under their presidencies, leaving the rotten officers within them eager and willing to help god-king Trump once he returned.
If there’s one thing to learn from Melon and his DOGE cretins, it’s that the institutions of the federal government are completely within the control of the executive. Apparently you can send in auditors to pull the records of the CIA if you want to, and you absolutely could prosecute CIA employees who denied you access to those records or destroyed them. If Biden or Obama did nothing about the excesses of the intelligence or security or policing agencies, it was not because they couldn’t it’s because they didn’t want to. Every NSA domestic spying program found to be illegal and then restarted under another codename – that’s personally approved of by the Democratic party. Every program where the Feds deputize state law enforcement to exempt them from their FOIA responsibilites and/or civil liability for the damage they do to innocent people – that continues because the democrats chose that it should. The entire apparatus of Donald Trump’s impending secret police state was built and maintained during democratic regimes as well as republican ones.
In the unlikely even that the US ever has another election fair enough to actually select democrats, this has to be the thing to push. Go after the institutions and individuals within those institutions who are violating people’s rights. Purge the police and intelligence services of anyone not committed to protecting the indvidual rights of your citizenry, rebuild them from the ground up to first protect the people, whether from foreign enemies or other parts of their own government. Or else even with a Trump defeat, the fascists in uniform will just be waiting for the next fascist president to put them to use.
@ AugustusVerger
“Fascism enabler” is a new one. (For those folling along at home the way I “enabled fascism” was to say , as a non-US citizen, that it’s people who voted fot Trump who elected Trump, not people who voted for neither Trump nor Harris.)
@49 – that’s one way of looking at it. another way is that they didn’t care enough about the consequences of fascism in terms of lives harmed or ended to prevent it from happening. that voting was an essential tool of harm reduction, and that if one opposes the shitty ways of the democrats, the whole fucken world would be better off with us electing and then fighting against them in ways outside the booth. that not voting against the nazis could only be motivated by murderous callousness, misguided ideological purity, or an actual desire to see fascism win – like leftists who want civilization to fail so they can make their anarchist utopia happen in the ashes.
can’t think of any other reasons. ya couldn’t vote in this, but you had an opinion on how it should go, and it went the way you wanted. you seem to be enjoying yourself quite a lot here. congratulations?
@ 49 …
I also said
as part of my cunning plan to enable fascism.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/27/is-anyone-still-unconvinced-that-he-is-absolutely-mad/#comment-2256121
@ 50 Bébé Mélange
Honestly no idea what you’re on about. Have you mistaken me for someone else? I cannot vote in US elections because I am American and was horrified at Trump winning. Clear?
@ 52
not American, I meant, obviously.
Here’s some more evidence of that dastardly fascist enabler Silentbob:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/23/the-world-is-riddled-with-maggots/#comment-2255625
I swear you can see the toothbrush mustache from here.
my meaning was fairly clear, right? i didn’t exactly mince words. i seem to have been mistaken about your position, drawing from the context of your arguments here because i am not familiar with everybody’s comment history on every blog. however, you do seem to be enjoying yourself, so again… congratulations?
What? I don’t think we are ideologically opposed in the slightest. Maybe don’t listen to trolls. (I have some trolls who talk shit about me in every thread because I’ve stood up for trans rights in the past and they don’t like it and trolls gotta troll.) They will try to turn us against each other. It’s a thing they do. I honestly don’t think we have any substantive disagreement so let’s unite against fascism. *fistbump*
@ ^ & 49 & various Silentbob : You still haven’t answered my questions here including on whether you are willing to leave John Morales alone and simply ignore his comments rather than constantly attacking him.
That’s simply wrong as I have already explained many times before. See my comment #46 back at the thread you linked to :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/02/27/is-anyone-still-unconvinced-that-he-is-absolutely-mad/#comment-2256146
There were just two options for President of the United States last year.
One of them was Kamala Harris.
The other was Donald Trump.
It really was just that binary.
Either Trump or NOT Trump.
If you did not help and vote for Kamala Harris then you didn’t help to stop Trump, in fact you helped elect him.
Beholder, Vicar and the rest of the Putridity Disunity mob that undermined and attacked the Democratic party and Kamala Harris they helped foist the second Trump presidency on the entire planet. They are culpable here and deserve to be held responsible and accountable for this – because they are.
Again, anything OTHER than a vote for Kamala Harris helped Trump.
Whether that was a direct Trump vote, a de facto indirect Trump vote by voting 3rd party spoiler or not voting, ALL the options other than voting for Kamala Harris meant you helped Trump. Because, once again again, the ONLY way to stop Trump was to vote for Kamala.
Not sure what part of this basic logic you fail to grok.
Also constantly attacking Kamala and the Democratic party and focusing only on their perceived or real problems = pretty good tell for a Trump and thus fascism enabler.
Oh and can you actually answer the questions asked of you in #31 and elsewhere Silentbob or are you going to keep ignoring them the way you seem incapable of ignoring John Morales and answer :
(1) I think the “trolley problem” is hypothetical bullshit. Do you you think it is valid?
(2) Do you think Beholder et al didn’t throw us all under that metaphorical tram / trolley last year? They did.
(3) Will you agree to simply ignore John Morales rather than constantly attacking him here?
Wish I didn’t have to keep repeating myself but someone here seems to have trouble with basic comprehension and thus apparently needs that repetition.
Oh look! MORE evidence of that notorious neo-nazi Silentbob enabling fascism.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/24/jb-pritzker-makes-my-day/#comment-2259052
I think we have enough for a dossier now. Call the secret police.
Oh wait… that what fascists do.
Silentbob @56:
Who are these horrible people who are persecuting you (in every thread!) for championing trans rights? Since we have many transgender folk and trans allies in the commentariat, why are they singling you out?