By Duncan Holditch
University of Maryland community members Friday protested Immigration Customs and Enforcement’s detention last week of freshman student Maria Flores Garcia.
UMD’s Anti-Imperialist Movement organized the protest at the Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building, which other organizations, like this university’s Young Democratic Socialists of America and Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society also led.
Students in front of Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building Face Protest Signs Towards the Street. Photo by Duncan Holditch. 
Students Carry Banner Towards Hornbake Plaza. Photo by Duncan Holditch. 
Students Converse While Holding Popular Protest Sign in Front of Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building. Photo by Duncan Holditch. 
Attendees Pose for Photo at the End of the Protest. Photo by Duncan Holditch. 
Students Congregate in Hornbake Plaza. Photo by Duncan Holditch. 
Speaker with Students for Justice in Palestine speaks on the steps of the Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building. Photo by Duncan Holditch.
Friday’s protest opened with over 100 community members demanding UMD’s administration publicly condemn Flores Garcia’s detention, establish UMD as a sanctuary campus, and divest from companies that work with and sell to ICE.
“The responsibility the University of Maryland has to its undocumented students is to stop investing in and partnering with companies that serve to accelerate the deportation and removal of them and their communities and their families.” said Shubh Agnihotri, a junior electrical engineering major. “[Divestment], it’s easy. It’s the most tangible thing that they can do considering that that student was not detained on campus.”
Flores Garcia, a UMD freshman studying public health, and her mother were detained on Nov. 5 during an annual check-in at the ICE office in Baltimore. They have since been transferred to a detention center in Monroe, Louisiana, where they now face threat of deportation to Mexico.
Flores Garcia’s boyfriend started a GoFundMe for her and her mother which aims to assist with immigration attorney fees. The GoFundMe has received nearly double its $25,000 in an outpouring of support from the Maryland community.
Community members also called for the establishment of a sanctuary campus. Despite Flores Garcia’s detainment occurring off-campus, PLUMAS Treasurer Adrian Siles, a junior environmental science major, feels that this event still shows the need for a sanctuary campus.
“The importance mainly it’s—for the sanctuary campus—that students feel more free to get their right to education and the right to their speech on campus,” Siles said.
Agnihotri and others expressed how Flores Garcia’s detainment off-campus called into question whether or not events would have transpired differently had she been on campus, and whether or not UMD would step in to protect its students should something like this happen on campus.
Some community members felt reminded that experiences like Flores Garcia’s can happen at any time, anywhere. Arlo Lentini, a sophomore sociology major and at-large steering member for YDSA expressed some of those fears.
“This is a reminder that this can happen to any of us,” Lentini said. “I think this brings back to the forefront the really horrific reality of this situation.”
Still, with the recent release of Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, a UC Berkeley student who ICE detained at San Francisco International Airport on Oct. 30, Agnihotri felt there was hope for Flores Garcia.
“I hope that those cases strengthen the legal ability for them to contest these frankly illegal actions,” Agnihotri said. “But why we’re here right now is to make sure that it never happens again.”
Featured Image: PLUMAS Representatives and Speaker on the Steps of the Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building. Photo by Duncan Holditch.