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Florida International University (FIU) is under fire from one of its own faculty members after news reports detailed that the school provided equipment to the Everglades immigration detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” The disclosure intensified existing anger over FIU’s police partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ongoing labor disputes, fueling demands for transparency, higher pay, and accountability from administrators.
After Prism and NBC6 reported that FIU supplied an emergency operations trailer to the construction site at “Alligator Alcatraz,” university President Jeanette Nuñez confirmed in a recent NBC6 interview that the university did so at the state’s request, clarifying that the equipment is owned by the state’s Department of Emergency Management, the lead agency overseeing construction and operations of the facility.
“It is a state asset, let’s be clear,” Nuñez told anchor Jackie Nespral. “When the Department of Emergency Management requests a state asset, we have to provide it. We don’t opine, we don’t object. People want to make more out of it than what it was.”
The president was not asked about the implications for the workers who had to carry out the task. Those workers expressed concern when given the order, according to an FIU staff member who previously spoke to Prism on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. FIU has not responded to Prism’s request for comment.
Faculty leaders say Nuñez’s explanation does little to ease concerns that the university — long touted as a haven for immigrant students — is complicit in immigration enforcement.
“FIUPD is ICE,” said Tania Cepero López, the president of the United Faculty of Florida (UFF-FIU) union, referring to the FIU Police Department. “The faculty are amazing, the students are wonderful, smart, and dedicated, and they deserve the best education in the world.”
FIU and ICE Relationship Deepens Fears on Campus
The equipment controversy comes on top of outrage over FIU’s finalized 287(g) agreement, which deputizes campus police as ICE agents. Nuñez defended the decision in the NBC6 interview, arguing that the agreement gives FIU more control.
“If ICE wants to come on campus, regardless of the agreement, they will come,” she said. “So they do have access to come into our campus. The police chief took the position, and I supported him, that he wanted to be in control [of] the situation from the get-go.”
Faculty remain unconvinced. Internal emails obtained by Prism show that the faculty union began pressing the administration in June for guidance on how faculty should respond if ICE enters classrooms in the coming school year. Only on Aug. 22 did the university provide a formal response: ICE can access public areas and enter classrooms with a warrant, consent, or exigent circumstances, and faculty should not obstruct ICE and notify FIUPD. The memo confirmed that FIUPD officers will inform faculty when acting as ICE agents, but stated that the university has “no plans to provide notifications” of ICE operations.
“The main priority right now is compliance, so that there’s no retaliation, so that we don’t lose funding, so that we don’t lose any more grants, so that we don’t lose courses in the curriculum,” Cepero López said of her impression of FIU administration’s motives. “There’s a lot of interference and a lot of oversight happening that, to me, is unprecedented.”
Cepero López added that the partnership with ICE is chilling both teaching and learning on campus. Faculty members, she said, are increasingly worried that under the new agreement, their syllabi, reading lists, and classroom discussions could become targets of political or police scrutiny.
The sense of fear is especially acute among international and undocumented students, according to Cepero López, many of whom have asked whether their classroom attendance could put them at risk if ICE officers entered a lecture hall or classroom. She said professors have reported receiving anxious questions from students regarding protocol around ICE and FIU police. Teachers themselves have been asking what they should do if an agent arrives during class and whether to continue teaching, ask for a warrant, or protect their students. Some students even fear returning to campus due to their immigration status, Cepero López said? .
The climate of uncertainty, Cepero López noted, is compounded by Florida’s broader restrictions on curriculum and diversity initiatives.
“Faculty are wondering, what’s the next thing that we’re going to be forced to do? What’s the next compliance item that we’re going to be forced to spend two hours working on instead of working on our research, instead of working on our lesson plans, instead of working on replying to student emails?” she said. “The morale is as low as I’ve ever seen it.”
Faculty say FIU’s collaboration with ICE undermines the very values that have defined the institution since its founding: diversity, inclusion, and international engagement. As Miami’s public research university, FIU has long recruited students and faculty from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, professors warn that that reputation is at risk.
Town Hall Invitation Denied
In an attempt to provide a space for administration to answer the community’s concerns, on Aug. 18, UFF-FIU formally invited FIU’s top leadership, including Núñez, Police Chief Alexander Casas, Provost Elizabeth Béjar, Board of Trustees Chair Carlos Duart, and General Counsel Ryan Kelley, to attend a community town hall. The union asked them to choose from three dates in September to discuss the ICE agreement, Duart’s business contracts tied to the detention camp, and FIU’s provision of state-owned assets.
“Our faculty, students, and community deserve a clear explanation of these institutional actions that affect our learning spaces and safety,” the union wrote in a letter.
Four days later, the administration declined. In a letter sent by Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Barbara Manzano, the chief negotiator in ongoing contract negotiations between the university and the union, FIU leaders said attendance was “unnecessary.” Instead, they pointed to prior appearances at a Faculty Senate meeting in April, a town hall in May, and Núñez’s TV interviews.
“Please feel free to use this response at the forum, in lieu of our attendance,” Manzano wrote.
Faculty say the event, scheduled for Sept. 9, will proceed without FIU leadership.
“I told them we’re going to do the town hall with or without you,” Cepero López said.
Bargaining Battle Adds to Tensions
The disputes over ICE and FIU’s relationship are unfolding alongside contentious contract negotiations. Some faculty members say that FIU has refused to honor raises previously negotiated in a three-year contract, citing legislative funding shortfalls. Instead, administrators have offered one-time bonuses tied to performance evaluations, a substitute that faculty call both inadequate and demoralizing.
“We’re at that point where we are tired of being asked to do more with less, and we’re just not going to continue to do that anymore,” Cepero López said. “Good working conditions for faculty equal good working conditions for students equal good learning conditions for students.”
The rejected raises would have provided a 2 percent increase across the board and an additional 1.5 percent merit raise. The raises wouldn’t have kept pace with inflation and Miami’s skyrocketing housing market, Cepero López said, but they were still seen as a baseline commitment.
“FIU has a strong tradition of faculty and administration collaborating, and that’s what made FIU rise so quickly,” Cepero López said. “And for so long, we’ve done a lot with a lot less than other universities.”
Instead, FIU proposed bonuses as low as $1,500 for faculty whose performance reviews were “satisfactory” and $3,000 for those rated “outstanding.” Unlike raises, bonuses do not contribute to base pay, meaning that salaries remain stagnant year to year.
During the most recent bargaining session on Aug. 29, the administration presented a new counteroffer: a recurring raise of 1 percent to base salary or $1,000 (whichever is greater) for nine-month faculty, with the equivalent applied to 12-month faculty, alongside a tiered one-time merit bonus of $1,000 to $2,000 based on performance evaluations. To fund the recurring increase, FIU said it shifted $2.2 million in expenses for postdoctoral hires from recurring to nonrecurring dollars.
Faculty union leaders acknowledged the adjustment but noted that FIU remains the only preeminent public university in Florida that initially offered no recurring salary increase this year. Other universities, including the University of West Florida, which offered 4 percent merit-based raises for the second year in a row, have made more competitive offers. The union will reconvene with administrators in the coming week ahead of a ratification vote on Sept. 16 and 17.
The issue cuts to the heart of recruitment and retention. Faculty warn that without competitive salaries, FIU risks losing talent to other universities including those outside the state. Several faculty members noted that the administration has simultaneously expanded spending on compliance measures and visiting instructors? to cover ballooning freshman classes, while telling full-time faculty that there isn’t enough recurring money to honor their contracts.
Litigation Looms Over “Alligator Alcatraz”
While FIU faces growing unrest on campus, the detention center itself is under legal fire. On Aug. 21, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction halting construction, barring the admission of new detainees, and requiring operations to wind down within 60 days.
The lawsuit, brought by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe, argues that the facility violated the National Environmental Policy Act by proceeding without an environmental impact study. Litigation will continue even as the camp closes.
“This is a landmark victory for the Everglades and countless Americans who believe this imperiled wilderness should be protected, not exploited,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a press release. “It sends a clear message that environmental laws must be respected by leaders at the highest levels of our government — and there are consequences for ignoring them.”
For the Miccosukee, whose homes and sacred grounds sit nearby, it was also a violation of sovereignty.
“Justice for us is people’s sovereign rights being respected on all levels,” said William “Popeye” Osceola, the secretary of the Miccosukee Tribe. “It reminds us that as much as the system is geared against us, there are still mechanisms we can engage with to fight for what we know is right, including our rights to this land. But it’s also a sovereignty issue.”
Osceola said the state and federal governments circumvented processes that the tribe has worked decades, if not centuries, to help establish. Those processes, he said, don’t just protect and benefit the tribe, but also other fellow citizens, including all Floridians, South Floridians, and any Americans visiting Big Cypress or the Everglades.
“Those who want this to happen are betting on people getting complaisant,” he said. “It’s no time to be complaisant.”
The university’s handling of these controversies mirrors a broader pattern critics say has defined the detention camp itself: decisions imposed from above without meaningful input from those most affected. For Miccosukee tribal members, who were excluded from consultation as construction encroached on their ancestral lands, that exclusion was a violation of sovereignty. For FIU faculty, it’s a breach of the university’s own stated mission of openness and inclusion, and highlights the stakes of the university’s entanglement in immigration enforcement.
“I don’t understand why they can’t communicate to us why this is happening and we have to hear from Jackie Nespral interviewing our president,” Cepero López said. “That’s not what accountability looks like.”
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