Maile Fuller was sitting in class when her professor stopped instruction to tell her peers that a fellow ECC student had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I found out like in class; our teacher told us about the email, and then I got the email right after,” Fuller said. 

On Thursday September 18, 2025 an ECC student was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside building K. This unexpected event caused various reactions. 

“I was shocked to find out what happened, you know we all heard about reports, but this happened right on campus,” said ECC student Davi Mulum.

Similarly, student Caleb Lamb explained feeling surprised that this incident happened so close to home. He said school should be a safe space.

“I felt like it wasn’t right because school’s supposed to be a safe space,” Lamb said. “It was definitely wrong to just take a student.”

Safety concerns were also expressed by Lamb, “I definitely feel like something else should be done because they can’t just walk in the school and take a student,” and suggested that more people should be coming together to advocate for undocumented students and resources.  

  Malum felt similarly, expressing that there should have been more security in place to protect undocumented students and greater access to resources.

“I felt like they did try to, you know, calm everyone down from what happened,” Malum said. “But overall it’s not really public knowledge on the resources that are here.”

While this event didn’t directly affect these students, many noticed that undocumented individuals have become more aware of their surroundings. 

“It hasn’t really affected me, but a couple people that I know are a little bit on higher alert,” said Malum. 

Lamb also stated that his loved ones have expressed being concerned for their safety. 

“If anything happened like that to my friends, my family would not be happy at all, separating people from their families unjustly is something we should have stopped a long time ago,” said Lamb.