NYU Law students protest LexisNexis contract with ICE

Legislation pupils from NYU and Columbia College shown outside the Park Avenue headquarters of the information brokering corporation to need that it conclusion its deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Practically two dozen pupils from NYU’s University of Legislation and Columbia Legislation School gathered outside the headquarters of LexisNexis on Friday to protest the data firm’s deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Protesters criticized ICE for its skill to use LexisNexis’ info to circumnavigate sanctuary legal guidelines and recognize and get rid of noncitizens, statements that it has denied. The company has utilised the database extra than a million times this earlier yr.

“We will not set up with ICE,” college students chanted all through the protest, carrying posters with “#EndTheContract” and “#NoTechForICE” created on them.

“We have been arranging with a coalition of legislation colleges across the region — a pair of many years in the past, it was a lot more than 20 law faculties — to pressure LexisNexis to conclusion its contract with ICE,” Daad Sharfi, a third-calendar year at NYU Regulation, stated. “Today’s action was portion of that movement to get them to conclusion that deal.”

The protesters were members of the Conclude the Contract Coalition, a team shaped in summer time 2021 by a group of learners from NYU Regulation and other regulation educational facilities. The coalition aims to phone interest to the relationships in between ICE and authorized databases including LexisNexis and Westlaw. 

These databases are often applied by legislation students and attorneys to analysis court circumstances, but their respective mum or dad providers, RELX and Thomson Reuters, also keep the personal facts of tens of millions of people today, which include monetary data, addresses, cell phone figures and household info, and promote it to law enforcement and immigration authorities.

“LexisNexis supports the accountable use of information in accordance with governing statutes, restrictions and industry best procedures,” Jennifer Richman, a spokesperson for LexisNexis, wrote to WSN. “As with our other consumers, the Section of Homeland Safety should use our solutions in compliance with these rules.”

Sharfi said that the immigrants’ rights organizations Just Futures Legislation and Mijente have supplied authorized and logistical guidance to the marketing campaign.

“There’s no cause for [ICE] to have a $22.1 million contract to facilitate surveillance and deportation of immigrant communities other than profiting,” Sharfi reported. “Even nevertheless we could possibly appear like an inconsequential, tiny group of individuals, we’re looking at and we’re eager to do what ever it can take to get them to listen to us.”

ICE, which operates underneath the U.S. Division of Homeland Protection, has been criticized for forcibly separating youngsters from their households and exposing them to illnesses in immigration detention centers.

Rebecca Schectman, an additional third-calendar year at the regulation faculty, explained that other key companies, this kind of as Amazon, also have contracts with ICE.

“Not only are we seeking to get in touch with out Lexis, but we’re wanting to contact out any tech company which is collaborating with ICE,” Schectman claimed. “We’re seeking to defund them from each and every solitary angle.”

Speak to Yezen Saadah at [email protected]