Change comes after students react to Border Patrol presence
By Luke Thomas, September 9, 2o25
Cal Poly Pomona’s interim president, Dr. Iris S. Levine, released an announcement Monday, Aug. 25, stating that the September Career Fair and STEM Career Fair had been postponed in response to student backlash over rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Protection (CBP) were to be attending the fair.
“This adjustment allows us to thoughtfully reformat these events in response to student and community feedback, ensuring our career programming better serves the needs and aspirations of our students while remaining in compliance with our legal obligations as a public institution,” Levine said in the email, acknowledging the backlash, but affirming federal employers cannot be excluded from career fairs.
The controversy that ICE and CBP would be present began when CPP’s University News sent out an email Friday, Aug. 22, in response to online notice that CBP was signed up for the September Career Fair. The email confirmed that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including the CBP, would be attending the formerly scheduled fair.
While ICE was not listed under these agencies, according to the university’s announcement, the campus could not “prohibit ICE, CBP or DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] from participating in career fair activities,” due to being a public university. Concerns from students arose due to a belief ICE would be involved, which led to backlash toward both ICE and other law enforcement agencies, and the eventual postponement of the career fairs.
Following the decision to postpone the fairs, CPP also released an FAQ sheet with statements on how employers join the career fairs and revealed ICE was not registered to attend the September Career Fair. Despite this clarification, there are still objections to other law enforcement agencies, including CBP, who remains registered, visible on CPP’s Instagram announcements and flyers on campus.
A common sentiment among students online is that the school shouldn’t have invited ICE, who was not registered, and CBP as attendees, or should’ve rejected CBP. The problem is CPP is not legally allowed to exclude CBP or any federal agency, including ICE, should it register for career fairs in the future.
“Denying federal agencies while allowing others (employers, recruiters or agencies) can be considered viewpoint discrimination or a violation of nondiscrimination/equal access policies under the First Amendment,” CPP’s FAQ said.
Furthermore, according to CPP’s FAQ sheet on the postponement, employers are neither invited nor chosen directly by the campus; instead, an automated email via Handshake is sent out to the current 106,266 verified employers linked with CPP.
According to Xiao-Fend Fu, a representative of the Los Angeles County Probation Department, the ability to join is in the hands of the employers.
“Usually, our departments will look through Handshake for events in our surrounding area, and we sign up with different schools (like CPP),” Fu said.
However, some students believe that the school, as a Hispanic-serving institution, still should’ve taken different measures to address certain agencies like DHS being signed up for the fair, without postponement.
“Why are you letting someone who could easily change someone’s life for the absolute worst in? How can you say you have the student’s best interests when you let someone like that in, when you’ve seen on the news the kind of damage and disruption that they do?” said Valerie Laguna, a literary studies student. “It seems like they’re trying to let the negativity and backlash flow down.” “Why would you cancel [postpone] the career fair knowing there are other employers … that they did ask and invite, so it’s like you’re also doing dirty the students and the people you invited,” Laguna expressed.
According to Tracee Passeggi, the director of the Career Center, employers were notified right away about the postponement.
“After the email went out about the university postponement of the career fairs, we notified the employers directly that we were postponing and that we were reimagining and looking at ways to potentially better connect them in a more intentional way with students,” Passeggi said. “We’re just starting to think about what that might look like.”
As reported by NBC4, CPP is looking to host smaller, boutique career fairs; however, CBP will still be present at some.
According to Terri Gomez, provost and vice president for the Division of Academic Affairs, this reimagining should also help the career fairs be more productive.
“When you attend those fairs, some of those employers have lines of 50 students waiting to meet them, and it’s pretty loud out there, so it’s not always conducive to engaging with employers in a more intimate and quieter setting,” Gomez said. “So, I think it’s time to rethink those.We won’t just do the large events, but we have more focused events that are either major or area-focused.”
Gomez disclosed the College of Education and Integrative Studies and the Collins College of Hospitality Management have their own career events planned, and the Career Center is engaging in a “design sprint” to reimagine how to move forward with the change of format.
According to Gomez, announcements for the fairs should be coming out in the next couple weeks.
Feature image courtesy of Luke Thomas
