Dear UCW-KY members,

In an April 4th letter to the University of Kentucky campus community, President Eli Capilouto revealed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had revoked the F-1 Student Visa status of “a small number” of international students on the UK campus. No rationale for these revocations was mentioned in President Capilouto’s letter, nor has any such rationale been forthcoming in the days since this announcement was made.

The United Campus Workers of Kentucky stands in solidarity with the international workers of Kentucky. We denounce these visa revocations in the strongest terms possible for the negative impacts that they will have on campus workplaces around the Commonwealth. We especially identify three such impacts of these revocations: their chilling effect on the practice of free speech in campus workplaces; the signal they send to international workers to stay away from Kentucky campuses; and their degradation of the rule of law as such.

These terminations do not occur in a vacuum. As the New York Times reports, across the nation the Trump administration has stripped over 600 students of their visas. Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk and Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Ranjani Srinivasan were all accused of “supporting terrorist activities” for expressing their political viewpoints. Öztürk and Khalil were detained and are currently being held without warrant; Srinivasan has fled the country. It is clear that despite an absence of explicit rationale for these revocations, the Trump administration aims to censure international students for their political views and to curtail what the administration calls “illegal protests” on college and university campuses. For these reasons, UCW-Kentucky condemns the Trump administration’s actions. The foundational rights of free speech and free assembly–enshrined in the U.S. Constitution–are core elements of labor organizing. Indeed, workers have consistently secured, exercised, and preserved these rights, and we can be counted on to do so again in the current era.

We stand in solidarity with these UK students–and all international students and workers on Kentucky campuses. Since F-1 Student Visa status was created in 1952, international students have enhanced the quality of education and campus life at every Kentucky college and university. Learners from across the world have been drawn to Kentucky for many reasons, including the esteem of its academic institutions. We believe our university administrations have a responsibility to ensure that international students have the tools, resources, and information that they need to continue to freely and safely continue their degrees at Kentucky’s universities. However, we have seen time and time again that our administrators have failed to make good on the promises of higher education. The Kentucky campus chapters of the United Campus Workers are proud to support all campus workers with international visas. We need you in Kentucky, and we will do everything we can to keep you safe and secure.

We are asking workers across Kentucky to sign onto this letter in support of our international workers.

In Solidarity,

The UCW-KY Steering Committee:

Gerald Nachtwey, Chair (EKU)

Donald Moore, Vice-Chair (UK)

Elise Franklin, Secretary (U of L)

Ray Horton, Treasurer (Murray St.)