Four February events on IU’s campus-wide calendar feature virtual career expos and webinars hosted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, inviting students to talk with CBP recruiters.
Iterations of the virtual recruiting events appear on IU’s events calendar for Feb. 5, Feb. 11, Feb. 18 and Feb. 26. None of the online event postings contain registration links, but three contain links to a CBP careers site.
The events, also posted to Handshake, a third-party platform IU uses to connect students to job openings and career events, are not organized or hosted by the university, IU spokesperson Mark Bode said in an email.
"Indiana University students have access to all job and internship opportunities posted on Handshake,” Bode wrote. “While Handshake events are listed on the IU events calendar, virtual events of this nature are hosted and controlled by employers, not Indiana University.”
Bode did not answer questions from the Indiana Daily Student on how IU vets and approves events added to the calendar and if the CBP events reflect the university’s values.
Faculty and students have expressed disappointment with IU for allowing the events to be posted to its website, questioning how it was approved.
A screenshot of the event "U.S. Customs and Border Protection Virtual Career Expo" scheduled for Feb. 18 is seen listed on IU's events calendar Jan. 29, 2026. IU spokesperson Mark Bode said the virtual event was posted to Handshake.
Faculty reaction
During Tuesday’s Bloomington Faculty Council meeting, IU history professor Alex Lichtenstein raised a question about the Feb. 18 event.
“How do decisions get made about which operations get to recruit students through our doors at virtual career fair expos?” Lichtenstein asked.
IUB Chancellor David Reingold said typically campus career fairs are organized locally, by the university’s different schools.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Rahul Shrivastav said he had “no idea” where that posting came from.
“I can also tell you that we as a public institution do not discriminate between agencies,” he said. “We don't favor one versus the other. They’re all open.”
Lichtenstein mentioned the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Minneapolis residents fatally shot by federal agents on Jan. 7 and Jan. 24 amid protests against the recent immigration crackdown by ICE in the city. Lichtenstein said he is not comfortable with CBP employees having a presence at IU.
The Feb. 18 event description begins with “Help Defend the Homeland,” a reference to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security recruiting campaign to “Recruit Patriots to Join ICE Law Enforcement and Remove Worst of the Worst from U.S.,” according to a July release.
While both in the DHS, CBP is different from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the ICE website. CBP is tasked with enforcing immigration law and customs near borders, while ICE enforces these laws within the United States, as well as at the border. The Feb. 18 event description does note that DHS agencies aside from CBP will be at the event.
C.J. Brooks, former associate director for operations and assessment in the IU Career Development Center, said in an email that during his more than five-year period as an IU employee, he was a campus-wide administrator for Handshake and controlled his office’s web presence. This included using LiveWhale, the content management platform that IU’s events calendar is run through, to add events to the calendar.
The CBP events on IU’s calendar include a note stating that the opportunities came from Handshake, which employers can use to share career opportunities to various universities simultaneously.
Several of the same CBP virtual events are on calendars or career services sites of Cornell University, the University of Pittsburgh, Wake Forest University and Ursinus College, among others. The Feb. 18 virtual event can also be found on Indeed, a job posting platform.
Brooks said that CBP created the event on Handshake and shared it with universities on the platform but claimed that LiveWhale is a manual platform, and the events uploaded to Handshake are not published to the IU events calendar without approval from someone on campus.
“There are thousands of Handshake events that go unpublished from IU’s website, so why was this one an exception?” Brooks wrote. “Why did they want to share this event to their larger platform?”
Other employers’ Handshake events also appear on the campus-wide events calendar, including a Mayo Clinic webinar and PeakSpan Capital info session.
Several faculty at the BFC meeting asked IU not to platform the agency.
Reingold, who also said he was not familiar with the listing, told attendees he hoped to find a way forward that would not involve canceling the event.
“By recognizing CBP as a legitimate employer and recruiter, especially on our campus, we’re not being neutral,” Lichtenstein said. “We’re legitimating this particular organization and what it stands for. ‘Defend the homeland,’ murdering people in the street, violating people’s constitutional rights. I don’t think those are the values the university stands for or wants to stand for.”
Political science professor Bill Scheuerman said the idea that all government agencies should recruit IU students doesn’t make sense anymore.
“That made sense when we were living in a liberal democracy,” Scheuerman said. “All political scientists, all political sociologists who know what they’re talking about are pointing out that we’re now undergoing dramatic democratic backsliding.”
The council moved to add a full discussion about the recruitment events and how they were added to the events calendar to its Feb. 10 meeting.
Student reaction
Despite these events not being hosted by IU, co-Chair of the IUB chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America Diego Barron said students still are upset about the posting on the university’s calendar.
“It shows a lack of, I don’t know, care for students of like, marginalized communities who identify as immigrants, as Hispanic, as Latinos, any kind of that kind of community who, you know, are threatened by ICE, which is like a reflection of Trump and our current political climate,” he said. “We pay tuition here. I would like to have a university that kind of like has my interest at heart.”
The other YDSA chapter co-chair, Eamonn Keane, said the posting makes students scared.
“I think it strikes a lot of fear into the hearts of many students, especially international students,” Keane said. “We’ve had students come up to us and say, ‘Hey, I don’t know if we can come to (YDSA) meetings, because we’re afraid of backlash against the university.’ Frankly, it’s a slap in the face to all these students. Many of them are afraid of, you know, ICE coming onto campus and taking them away.”
An IU Northwest student created a petition on Tuesday urging IU to cancel the Feb. 18 expo, though the university is not hosting the event. As of 6:00 p.m. Thursday it has more than 7,900 signatures. The petition has more than 180 comments from students and alumni expressing disappointment with the university and criticizing IU for allowing ICE recruitment to be "facilitated” by the school.
The Bloomington chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is hosting a walkout and rally at noon Friday at City Hall to protest ICE and the use of Flock Safety surveillance cameras in Bloomington.
