Last month, a Boston University junior proudly posted online that he had spent months calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement to report Latino workers at a neighborhood car wash. Nine people were detained, including siblings and a 67-year-old man who has lived in the U.S. for decades. The student celebrated the arrests and told ICE to “pump up the numbers,” demonstrating the need for universities to begin addressing immigration-based targeting as a threat to students' sense of safety and belonging.

As the daughter of Caribbean immigrants and a researcher who studies immigrant-origin youth, I was shaken but not surprised, aware of the urgent need for addressing immigration-based targeting on campuses across the country. This incident, which did have some backlash, revealed a growing problem on college campuses: Many young people are learning to police one another rather than learn alongside one another.

That means the new border patrol could be your classmate. Our schools are not prepared for this. That is why colleges must start addressing immigration-based targeting as a serious threat to student safety and belonging and take immediate steps to prevent it — as they do with racism, antisemitism and homophobia.

The incident at Boston University is bigger than one student with extreme views, demonstrating the importance of addressing immigration-based targeting on campus. We are living in a moment shaped by online outrage, anonymous tip lines and a culture that encourages reporting anyone who seems “suspicious.”

In this environment, some young people have started to believe that calling ICE is a form of civic duty, underscoring the need for addressing immigration-based targeting on college campuses. That thinking doesn’t stay online. It walks right into classrooms, dorms, and group projects. When it does, the impact is not abstract. It is deeply personal for the immigrant-origin youth sitting in those same rooms.

Many of these students grew up with fear woven into their daily lives. Their neighbors disappeared overnight, they heard stories of parents being detained at work and they began translating legal mail before they were old enough to drive. They know exactly what an ICE call can set into motion. They carry that fear with them to school, demonstrating the threats to immigrant students' sense of belonging and the urgency of colleges addressing immigration-based targeting.

Read the full article about immigration-based targeting at universities by Madison Forde at The Hechinger Report.