Students protested at Carnegie Mellon University Wednesday against a campus recruitment visit by software company Palantir. The business contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and its software has been used to aid the agency in workplace deportation raids.
ICE has been criticized heavily by human rights organizations, in part for its family separations and migrant deaths in its custody.
In recent weeks campus recruitment efforts by Palantir have been met with protests across the country. Locally, the CMU event was organized in part by Bonnie Fan, who is a graduate student at the university's Heinz College.
Fan said she's particularly disappointed Palantir was on campus because CMU has released a statement in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. That policy postpones deportation for some undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
"Bringing a company that enabled ICE deportations on the undocumented community was harmful, and in direct violation of that statement," Fan said.
School of Computer Science graduate student João Martins also attended the protest.
"I believe there are absolute moral wrongs in separating people from their families and deporting them en masse," Martins said.
In a statement CMU said it supports freedom of speech.
"The university supports both the rights of the students protesting and those who wish to consider employment with a particular employer."
Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.
WESA receives funding from Carnegie Mellon University.
