Anti-Israel Rutgers center teaches students how to thwart ICE

The Rutgers Law School Center on Security, Race and Rights, led by Palestinian-American activist Sahar Aziz, hosted so-called Know Your Rights seminars as a response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students involved in anti-Israel campus protests and others who harbor pro-Hamas sympathies.

By Chuck Ross, The Washington Free Beacon

A Rutgers University center under congressional investigation for its connections to anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism activity is advising Palestinian and Muslim students about how to subvert U.S. immigration officials, suggesting they lock smartphones and take other “digital hygiene” measures to avoid deportation.

The Rutgers Law School Center on Security, Race and Rights, led by Palestinian-American activist Sahar Aziz, hosted so-called Know Your Rights seminars on April 28 and May 7 as a response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students involved in anti-Israel campus protests and others who harbor pro-Hamas sympathies.

Golnaz Fakhimi, the speaker at the April 28 event, encouraged students “not to have Face ID or thumbprint ID turned on, to set passcodes that are long and strong” in order to prevent immigration officials from accessing smartphones during immigration stops.

Fakhimi, who referred during the seminar to the “ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” informed students that federal agents at airports and border checkpoints are able to use forensic tools to access “content that is deleted from a device.”

The May 7 seminar, led by Raquel Aldana of the University of California, Davis, asserted that universities “shouldn’t be collaborating with ICE” by providing information on international students and faculty. She also called on schools to “clearly define what is a private space within universities, like dorms, classrooms, clinics, labs,” to prevent student interactions with ICE officials.

While Know Your Rights seminars are common in the nonprofit field, the Rutgers events could raise questions for the public university, which receives around $400 million in federal funds each year. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee launched an investigation last month into a nonprofit group, the Chinese-American Planning Council, for offering guidance on how to evade ICE officials.

The Department of Education is investigating whether Rutgers and dozens of other universities have emboldened anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities on their campuses. The Trump administration froze $2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University for its failure to curtail anti-Semitic incidents on campus, and struck agreements with schools like Columbia University. Rutgers has not yet been targeted in the crackdown.

Rutgers received more than $1 billion from the state of New Jersey for its overall budget last year, and more than $560 million from the federal government to fund research projects. The Center on Security, Race and Rights operates under Rutgers Law School, where Aziz teaches courses on national security, “Islamophobia,” and critical race theory. The center receives half of its budget through the Rutgers University chancellor’s budget and through the Rutgers University Foundation, a charity operated by the school. Rutgers has not yet been targeted in the crackdown.

But House and Senate Republicans are already investigating the center, over what lawmakers have said is its record “of virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism.”

In one high-profile incident, the center organized an event on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with Sami Al-Arian, a former professor who was convicted of helping fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Many of the center’s faculty advisers have cheered the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Joseph Massad, a Columbia University professor who called the October 7 attacks “awesome,” “astounding,” “striking,” “innovative,” and “victories of the resistance,” is a distinguished fellow at the Rutgers center. At a Rutgers center event in December 2023, Massad falsely claimed the Israeli military, not Hamas, engaged in the “indiscriminate strafing” of music festival attendees attacked on Oct. 7.

Susan Akram, another Rutgers center distinguished fellow, has called Hamas and Hezbollah “resistance movements.” Lara Sheehi, a Rutgers center faculty adviser, has referred to Hamas as “martyrs” while endorsing their “armed resistance” against Israel, the Washington Free Beacon has reported.

Aziz, who launched the center in 2018, has faced scrutiny for downplaying the Hamas attacks and condemning Israel. After Hamas attacked Israel in May 2021, Aziz signed an open letter with other activists that stated, “We are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism.”

During the May 7 seminar, Aziz decried what she called the “Israelization of American foreign policy,” and asserted that the Trump administration is targeting largely Palestinian and Muslim students who are “trying to stop the genocide that’s happening right now in Gaza.”

deportationsPro-Hamas activismRutgers