Three people were arrested by Ohio State Police on Tuesday for criminal trespassing at the Ohio Union during a protest targeting Customs and Border Protection at the College of Arts and Sciences annual spring career fair.
Around 75 students and community members gathered at the Ohio Union to confront the CBP recruiters — who operate under the Department of Homeland Security — and generally protest against the university’s decision to include the organization among the 150 employers at the career fair in the background of recent increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity across the United States and specifically in Minneapolis.
“Three individuals were arrested for criminal trespass, following multiple warnings, after disrupting a career fair event inside the Ohio Union and violating university space standards,” Dan Hedman, university spokesman, said in a statement. “Two of the three arrestees are students.”
After dozens of protesters entered the second floor ballroom where the fair was taking place, police confronted the students, saying they were disrupting the career fair. They arrested one person inside the room and two others outside.
Prior to any arrests, the CBP recruiters began packing up the booth after several minutes of confrontation by protesters.
Nadia Qutob, a first-year graduate student in astronomy, who witnessed the three arrests, said they were “out of pocket.”
“We were asking 'what are they being charged with,'” Qutob said. “Where are they going to be held? Where are you taking them? No answers from any of the officers that were involved in any of it. So quite scary, but it also felt like intentional fear tactics being used on the part of OSUPD specifically.”
Qutob said student protesters spoke with Ohio State officials prior to the protest and agreed not to use any amplified sound devices or participate in chanting. Students checked into the career fair with their BuckIDs before entering, following university protocol.
Fourth-year film studies student Eros Elizabeth Bathery, who attended the protest, said Ohio State has cracked down on student speech in recent months.
Bathery mentioned Senate Bill 1, an Ohio bill that passed last year which reformed public universities by eliminating DEI programming, mandating civic courses, banning faculty strikes and changing the terms of tenure to emphasize intellectual diversity.
“SB 1 passed and they bent over backwards essentially to silence freedom of speech,” Bathery said. “You can't decorate the dorms. You can't chalk on the sidewalks. You can’t talk about certain topics in class, which affects a lot of majors, especially majors that involve subjectivity. And now you're telling me that on top of all this, they're allowing essentially the second coming of the Gestapo to come in and recruit more people.”
WOSU does not currently have the names of the three people who were arrested.