UMass Boston’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held a walkout April 4 to protest the arrest of various international students by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The walkout, held on the Campus Center lawn, condemned the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University March 8 and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University March 25. Both students were involved in pro-Palestinian activism before being apprehended and having their student visas revoked without warning. In the weekend after the walkout, two current UMass Boston students and five related to the UMass Boston community also had their visas revoked.

During the walkout, speakers shared frustration about the university’s response to these events. Topics also included UMass Boston’s purported lack of action to protect students from ICE, the university’s updated protest policies from 2024 and the university police department’s association with the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, which receives money from the Department of Homeland Security to supply “intelligence vital to the Department’s counterterrorism plans.”

“It was supposed to be kind of a show of our strength,” said Max Herschman, vice president of SJP. “It’s a show of the fact that we have people in the community willing to come out. We thought it was a good time to go out and just make a show of it. It’s supposed to bring people together and rally people together. When we get together like that, it’s not an end in itself. It’s a means to another end.”

SJP encouraged participants to sign onto a letter from a collection of activist groups across the UMass system. The letter, addressed to university chancellors, trustees and all Massachusetts elected officials, demanded the universities take a stand to protect their student bodies, especially those who are undocumented.

“The UMass system consistently postures as a progressive institution existing to benefit the communities in which it resides, yet it has consistently fallen short of taking genuinely progressive and community-oriented stances,” the letter states. “We understand that the actions taken against Mahmoud Khalil are just the beginning; that the Trump administration will not stop until anyone who refuses to bend to its will has been silenced, imprisoned, or deported.”

The walkout included speakers such as SJP Treasurer Balsam Mafhoum, Undergraduate Student Government Chair Eileen Ortega and professor of Africana Studies Keith Jones.

“There can be no business as usual at UMass Boston,” Mafhoum said during the walkout. “When the board of trustees fund corporations and occupations who go directly against the interests of students, remember the raised tuition fees. Remember your underfunded faculty.”

Both the walkout and the letter to administration called on UMass administration and UMass elected officials to end collaboration with ICE and DHS, protect students from state repression and make a statement demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil and calling for Columbia University to stop student protest repression.

“Our presence is an acknowledgement that it is us, the people, who have to do something,” said Lauren Nessralla, a speaker at the walkout. “We are who keeps us safe.”