CCNY Locks Up Student Immigrant Rights Activists

How Many Secret Holding Cells
Do CUNY Cops Have?

On April 15, three activists of the Internationalist Clubs at the City University of New York were detained by campus “Public Safety” officers and held for over an hour in a jail-like cell on CUNY’s City College campus in Harlem. While they sat behind bars on a flat metal bench that seemed to belong in a courthouse jail, they watched as the officers emptied their bags and meticulously searched the contents. This included petitions from the CUNY faculty/staff union’s Immigrant Solidarity Working Group as well as political literature, some of which the campus cops ostentatiously photocopied. When they were finally released, they were each issued summonses for “trespassing” and “loitering” and threatened that if they returned to campus, they would face criminal charges.

The existence of the holding cell surprised and shocked students, faculty and staff on campus, leading to a question that demands an answer: how many of CUNY’s 26 colleges have such cells, and where are they located?

Why were these student activists detained? They had set up a table on the public sidewalk that runs through CCNY, intending to gather signatures on the petition and talk to students about the Internationalist Clubs’ ideas and activities. The petitions they brought with them were part of a campaign by the union (PSC – Professional Staff Congress) demanding that the CUNY administration establish Immigrant Student Success Centers at all CUNY schools. These centers, which at present exist only at five of the campuses, offer important resources to immigrant students, including financial aid and legal consultations.

Following the students’ detainment, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs produced a leaflet titled “CCNY’s Police State Must Go!” (20 April 2026).When Club activists began distributing it at CCNY, they were again threatened with arrest. In the face of this repeated violation of basic free speech rights, the PSC’s former president and vice president, Barbara Bowen and Mike Fabricant, came to campus with student activists to help distribute the leaflet, in an important show of solidarity.

CCNY: Miniature Police State

What happened on April 15, the day the activists were locked up? Only minutes after setting up their table, they were approached by Public Safety officers and questioned about what they were doing. They were told that any literature distributed on campus had to pass approval (i.e., censorship) by the administration, and that their table went against school policies. When they pointed out that as CUNY students, they had a right to be on campus, they were ordered – under threat of arrest – to pack up and follow the cops to the campus security headquarters in CCNY’s Wingate Building.

They were told that they would simply be receiving summonses and that it would only take a short time. Once inside, however, they were ordered to empty their pockets; their phones and wallets were confiscated, and they were searched top to bottom before being led into the holding cell. The whole scene was clearly designed to intimidate.

This was not the first time that Internationalist Club activists have been targeted by CUNY cops in the past year. In November 2025, CCNY officers gave court summonses to five Internationalist Clubs activists for setting up a table on a public sidewalk across the street from campus. On that occasion, the students hadn’t even finished setting up the table or taken out any literature before being accosted by the cops. Given summonses for “loitering,” they went to court the following month, where the judge immediately dismissed the charges.

Considering the revolutionary Marxist politics of the Internationalist Clubs, it doesn’t come as a surprise to us when campus authorities attempt to silence or censor us. But there is a crucial fact that needs to be emphasized here: what happened at CCNY is an attack on the rights of all students, faculty and staff at City College and throughout the CUNY system. And this is part of a nationwide drive to escalate censorship and repression. Here as elsewhere, it’s the reds who take the lead in defending the basic democratic rights of all. And let’s recall that at Hunter College in 2024, the Internationalist Club led a successful campaign defending the right of students to post material on bulletin boards, free of administrative “approval.”

At City College, however, censorship has become entrenched. Over the past years we have witnessed repeated attempts by the CUNY administration, in step with university administrations across the country, to restrict free speech rights and academic freedom. This escalated with the violent efforts to curtail student opposition to the U.S./Israel genocide in Gaza, with the targeting of those speaking out and protesting in defense of the Palestinian people. This was part of a vicious nationwide onslaught against basic rights on campus, spearheaded by the Democratic Party and ramped up by the Trump administration and its minions in Congress and elsewhere.

On the night of 30 April 2024, City College became the epicenter of that repression at CUNY when college president Vincent Boudreau together with CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodriguez, then-mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch brought the NYPD’s infamous Strategic Response Group (SRG) onto campus to viciously “clear” the City College Gaza Solidarity Encampment. One hundred and seventy were arrested at City College that night, including four members of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs. The SRG was again brought in at Brooklyn College just over a year later, in May 2025, when they broke up and beat down a small group of students and faculty members who gathered to protest the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

In the two years since then, City College has become like a miniaturized police state. For months following the raid of the encampment, classes at City College were entirely remote as the administration sought to prevent any student protests. When the school did reopen for in-person classes, it did so with severe new restrictions on who could enter, and with an atmosphere of constant surveillance by campus security. A perimeter of security fencing was put up (which remains), and private security was hired. The avenue that runs through campus, which had typically been open to vehicles and pedestrian traffic, was closed off. Checkpoints were set up to check the IDs of students trying to enter.

Then there’s the City College cell itself. In an article on the detention of the student activists, CCNY’s student newspaper stated:

“The existence of a functioning holding cell on CCNY’s campus was seemingly news to the institution’s student body. Questions began to swirl about the reasoning for this secrecy and the possibility that Wingate Hall’s holding cell was merely one of many across CUNY campuses. According to an anonymous source, even CCNY’s President Vincent Boudreau seemed unaware of the cell’s existence on campus.”

– “80 Minutes: CUNY Public Safety and the Detainment of Three Students,” The Paper, 22 May

But unlike the cell, the politically motivated nature of this repression is hardly a secret.

Meanwhile, the assault on basic rights – which repression at CUNY is part of – continues to escalate. In June, 15 labor and immigrant rights activists in Minnesota were indicted on frame-up “conspiracy” charges; meanwhile, in Texas’ Prairieland case, activists were handed sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years on trumped-up “terrorism” and “conspiracy” charges.

Responding to the events at CCNY, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs have emphasized that what is at stake are the rights of all students, faculty and staff at the largest urban public university in the United States. We often make the point that “imperialist war abroad brings repression ‘at home’.” This was highlighted by the fact that on the day that campus cops threatened to arrest Internationalist Clubs activists for handing out the leaflet protesting the April 15 detention, U.S. Marine recruiters stood on campus a short distance away trying to snare students into enrolling to kill and die for the U.S. empire. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

Return to THE INTERNATIONALIST GROUP Home Page