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END THE CONTRACT

We are an ad-hoc group of law students and organizers that are demanding that law schools divest with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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DEMANDS

LexisNexis Must End Its $22.1 Million Data-Sharing Contract With I.C.E.
Thomson Reuters Must Reject Future Contracts With I.C.E.
Law School Deans Must End Their Contracts with LexisNexis and WestLaw/Thomson Reuters Because Reliance on These Companies for Legal Research Does not Absolve Culpability for Facilitating Deportation and Detention of Immigrants.
Law School Deans Must Publicly Condemn LexisNexis and WestLaw/Thomson Reuter's Contracts With I.C.E.

Law Schools Must Take Active Steps to Decrease Their Reliance on These Companies by Offering Alternative Research Methods For Their Legal Writing Curriculum.
Law Schools Must Invest Time and Resources Into Decreasing Their Reliance on WestLaw and Lexis.
Law Schools Must Commit to Educating Students About LexisNexis and WestLaw/Thomson Reuter's Harmful Practices & Partnerships in the 1L Legal Writing Curriculum.

End the Contract Coalition Official Response to LexisNexis

On Tuesday, October 5th, 2021, law students at UC Davis received an email from LexisNexis that attempted to clarify the nature of RELX's contracts with ICE and Homeland Security. LexisNexis's email is copied below.

ECC's Response

This pushback from Lexis is a gross mischaracterization of its collaboration with ICE. Through multiple FOIA requests, the Immigrant Defense Project and Just Futures Law have unearthed documents showing that ICE targets not only folks with a serious criminal history, but also folks with charges regarding their initial entry and re-entry into the US, DUIs, and visa misuse. In fact, in fiscal year 2020, ICE vetted targeting and investigative referrals on over 8.4 million people, which is equivalent to around 80% of undocumented individuals in the United States. This evidence stands in stark contrast to the claim that LexisNexis's tools are not used for deportation purposes unless an individual is involved in "child trafficking, drug smuggling, and other serious criminal activity."

Budget justification documents also indicate that the LexisNexis contract is requested for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations and explicitly for Fugitive Operations, divisions whose daily core missions are raids, arrests, and deportations.

Furthermore, government documents show that ICE leverages Lexis’s data brokering services to circumvent sanctuary city policies, therefore expanding the scope of this collaboration beyond purely criminal matters. It is also crucial to consider how historic and present-day over-criminalization of Black and brown immigrants feeds directly into Lexis’s flawed understanding of what constitutes criminal activity. The End the Contract Coalition wholeheartedly rejects Lexis’s purported stance on this matter and continues to vehemently demand that the company divest from ICE and the mass surveillance of immigrants.

Elsevier Employees Against ICE

The End the Contract Coalition stands in solidarity with employees of Elsevier, a subsidiary of RELX and sister company to LexisNexis. There is broad dissent across civil society to the data sharing contracts between big data companies and ICE, and for good reason. Law students across the country are forced to engage with Lexis' research tools in order to succeed at work and school, and Elsevier employees are forced to choose between their livelihoods and their ethical convictions. Please read the brief statement from Elsevier employees listed below.

Link

Elsevier Workers in Solidarity Open Letter

We, workers at Elsevier in solidarity, are stating in no uncertain terms that we reject cooperating with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and their continued human rights violations, including, but not limited to, perpetuating climbing death rates in ICE’s detention centers. Elsevier and LexisNexis are both subsidiaries of RELX. We are publicly calling for the cancellation of LexisNexis’ contract with ICE, and a written promise not to work with state actors or agencies who are using our services to commit human rights abuses in the future. We are disheartened that even after concerns about these contracts were raised by Mijente, multiple members of the education/legal community, and the ACLU, RELX continues to see no ethical issue with this partnership. It is our firm belief that this directly conflicts with Elsevier's Mission of “benefitting society” and the human rights section of the RELX Code of Ethics. We are proud of the work we do and wonderful people with whom we work. We cannot and will not quietly stand by as RELX aides and abets ICE in continuing to weaponize data against our most vulnerable.

Know Your Rights, Hosted by Immigrant Defense Project and Surveillance Resistance Lab

The End the Contract Coalition will hold a week of action for Monday, April 3 to Friday, April 7. Law schools across the country will be putting on local events to call attention to the issue at their schools and mobilize students and administrators to take action.

Before our week of action gets started, we encourage interested students and allies to attend two webinars:

Join the Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) and the Surveillance Resistance Lab in a two-part train-the-trainer series' “Be Informed: what is ICE, how do they operate, and what are your rights during an encounter with them?”. The trainings aim to prepare advocates, organizers and allies to give Know-Your-Rights information to clients and community members.

The trainings will be held virtually on Tuesday March 28, 2023 and Tuesday April 4, 2023 from 2-3pm ET each day. We encourage participants to attend both days.

Registration is required for the trainings.

Part One - March 28, 2023 from 2-3 pm ET (Recording):

This training gives an overview of how ICE operates, including providing political context to the current immigration system. It describes how ICE uses policing and surveillance tools to locate, target, and track non-citizens.

Part Two - April 4, 2023 from 2-3 pm ET:

This training explains Know-Your-Rights information during different scenarios when encountering ICE officers. It helps participants learn and discuss what individuals could do in each scenario.

Trainers:

Genia Blaser, Supervising Attorney, IDP

Ana Gabriela Dimaté, Hotline Paralegal, IDP

Alli Finn - Senior Researcher & Organizer, Surveillance Resistance Lab

Em Puhl, Senior Staff Attorney, IDP

Please note that these trainings are not open to members of the media or press, to prosecutors, law enforcement officials, or employees of the Department of Homeland Security.

For questions, contact kyr@immdefense.org.