The University of Chicago and Loyola University are asking students and the community for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings so they can be posted on their live surveillance maps and ultimately obstruct officers from doing their job.
The Loyola Phoenix, funded in part by the university, hosts a live "ICE Tracker Map" that is updated with crowd-submitted agent sightings in neighborhoods around campus with timestamped verification.
As of October 28 – just 13 days after the surveillance tool was launched – more than a dozen ICE sightings were already displayed on the paper's website.
Similarly, The Chicago Maroon's interactive map pinpoints ICE locations and detainments and includes photographs and GPS coordinates of enforcement scenes.
"They're putting at risk the lives of law enforcement agents and their families," says Laurie Higgins of Breakthrough Ideas.
Activists oppose ICE officers wearing masks because it obscures their identities, which supposedly reduces accountability and increases fear or intimidation during enforcement actions. They also argue it contributes to a sense of militarization and makes it harder for communities to verify that personnel are legitimate law-enforcement officers.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security reports there has been 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE officers in recent months.
"They wear masks because they've been doxed by leftists," Higgins asserts.
She says radicals and leftists began infiltrating college faculty and administrative positions in the late '60s, so she finds this surveillance "outrageous but not surprising."
"I'm sure there are professors at all these universities that are supporting this," the writer tells AFN.
Campus Reform reports the tracker maps remain publicly available and continue to be updated while both student newspapers promote a hotline run by the activist Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, whose "Eyes on ICE" text message alert system tells illegal immigrants when ICE is operating nearby.
The college news outlet has questioned both universities about the role of taxpayer-funded institutions in undermining federal law.
