ASU Republican group asks students to sic ICE on their classmates

A young-Republican group at Arizona State University wants students to snitch on their immigrant classmates, hoping to speed their deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Even the legal immigrants.

College Republicans United — one of at least two GOP-affiliated student groups at ASU — made a brash announcement Thursday, saying it would set up a table at the school’s Memorial Union on Friday to encourage students to report classmates to ICE.

That might seem like normal behavior for zealous and hate-filled right-wingers. But the eye-catching part? They specified that even lawfully present residents should be deported.

“So far, Trump’s administration is averaging only about 1,000 per day — far below what’s needed,” the club wrote. “There are also many DACA recipients who should be sent back.”

DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is a program that allows people who have been in the country since they were children to defer deportation by applying for protected status every two years.

The club is also selling “ICE Volunteer” shirts for $14.48, with the CRU logo on the front and the Department of Homeland Security logo on the back. Kids, your racism is showing, and it costs 15 bucks.

The announcement generated swift backlash online.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, called the snitch fest “abhorrent behavior by this extreme right group at ASU. Every student should be able to feel safe on campus. It's appalling to see this division and hatred in our community.”

The Chicano/Latino Law Student Association condemned the young Republicans group in a statement released on X and called on “the ASU administration to take immediate action to prevent the harassment or intimidation of any students.” Phoenix City Councilmember Carlos Galindo-Elvira called CRU’s announcement “vile and xenophobic” and also called for action from the school.

“It will employ racial profiling & targeting students & staff who are lawfully present in USA,” Galindo-Elvira wrote on X.

State Sen. Lauren Kuby, a Democrat who represents Tempe, aid she wasn’t sure if the group was sanctioned by ASU. Nonetheless, she denounced CRU as being “in clear violation of the student code of conduct,” pointing to a passage that prohibits “endangering, threatening or causing physical harm to any member of the university community.”

Phoenix New Times sent questions for the university to ASU Director of Media Relations Veronica Sanchez, including about whether the group is sanctioned and if the school will take any action, but has not heard back. The other GOP group on campus, College Republicans, did not respond to a request for comment.

What is College Republicans United?

College Republicans United has a history of far-right extremism.

In 2023, it hosted an event featuring white nationalist Nick Fuentes that got the group into hot water for erroneously naming county Republicans as supporters. A year earlier, the group invited white nationalist Jared Taylor onto campus to give a speech, costing ASU $11,000 in security expenses. In 2019, New Times reported the contents of a group chat in which CRU members shared racist, antisemitic and homophobic sentiments.

In its announcement, CRU also referenced 1954’s Operation Wetback, another mass deportation that focused on booting brown people from the country. “Mass deportation isn’t unprecedented; Eisenhower oversaw the removal of 1.5 million in a single year,” the group said of Operation Wetback, though it didn’t mention the operation’s racist name.

The group seems to have gotten that number from Trump himself, but historians estimate the number of deportations as closer to 300,000 and at most 1.3 million. Many of those deported shouldn’t have been.

Doris Meissner, a former Commissioner of the U.S Immigration and Naturalization Service, said in a 2016 CNN interview that Operation Wetback “was based on a lot of xenophobia, and it resulted in sizable large-scale violations of people’s rights, including the forced deportation of U.S. citizens.”

CRU seems to be abiding by the same principle: It doesn’t matter if they’re legally here, get the brown people out.

Basking in the glow of Trump’s return to the White House, CRU doesn’t appear to expect much resistance. In its announcement, it referenced a 2019 protest that forced the group to cancel an event at which CRU was hosting ICE. “Since then, the left has largely been defeated on campus,” the group crowed, noting that “the ASU administration has been much more cooperative in keeping civility for CRU organized events.”

Whether that’s true remains to be seen. By the time CRU sets up its table around 10 a.m. Friday, we’ll all find out.