Cali Students Chant ‘F*** Your Borders’ At Border Patrol Recruiters

By Blake Neff

Students at the University of California, Santa Barbara launched an aggressive protest at a job fair, chanting “fuck your borders” at recruiters trying to solicit applications for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Video of the protest was obtained and uploaded to YouTube by The College Fix:

“Fuck your borders, fuck your walls,” chanted about 50 protesters at the job fair. Other chants used by protesters included “Separating families is not a career” and “Migration is a human right.” Many students carried banners bearing slogans like “Undocumented Unafraid,” effectively taunting CBP with their illegal status.

One of the graduate students participating in the protest complained that CBP’s presence at the job fair was “triggering” for students, because it suggested the campus wasn’t a safe space for illegal immigrants.

“We do have undocumented students here on campus who are at potential risk,” Idalia Robles told The College Fix. “This is a very triggering event for people in those circumstances. There is no space on this campus for an organization that continues to threaten the safety of students.”

The presence of CBP Thursday’s job fair had actually been announced Monday, with CBP providing a statement explicitly saying they would only be there to recruit and not to enforce immigration law.

“Uniformed CBP staff will be on site with the sole purpose of providing students with information about a broad range of career opportunities. The CBP personnel will be attending in a recruitment capacity,” the statement said.

According to the Fix, the protest initially started inside the job fair, but was eventually forced outside where it continued for some time.

It’s not the first time CBP has encountered stiff opposition in California. Last year protests forced it to pull out of a job fair at the University of California, Irvine.