#UC Berkeley students plan to skirt ICE rules with fake course for foreign classmates

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Students walk past Sather Gate on the University of California at Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California.
AP

Hundreds of students at the University of California at Berkeley are privately discussing a plan to create a “dummy” course.

The bogus class is allegedly being designed solely to help international students on F-1 student visas avoid deportation under new US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regulations — and the students claim at least one faculty member is on board, Fox News has learned.

The plan, which would likely afoul of laws against immigration fraud if enacted, was reportedly hatched hours after ICE announced Monday that foreign students in the US are required to take some in-person instruction or they will not be allowed to legally remain in the country.

“Berkeley students are creating a 1-unit, in-person, student-run class to help international students avoid deportation due to the new ICE regulations,” a Berkeley Urban Studies student wrote in a now-deleted tweet, which has been archived by Google. “love my school sometimes.”

The tweet, which was shared more than 25,000 times before it was taken down, linked to a longer post stating that a member of the UC Berkeley community had “found a faculty member who will sponser [sic] this.” The post noted that a syllabus was being drafted and that the course was “ONLY for students who are international and need a physical component to remain in the United States.”

The longer post has been shared hundreds of times on various UC Berkeley-related social media groups, including several that are publicly available. Academics with ties to UC Berkeley, including Deborah Miranda, have spread news of the course on their own Facebook accounts. (Miranda falsely said in a post that the ICE regulations would affect “Dreamers”; they would in fact affect students with F-1 visas.)

However, some students noted that the plan might not work.