Students gather to grieve at vigil against ICE

Candles dotted an attentive crowd of about 100 at White Plaza on Wednesday night, with speakers and performers offering tributes on stage as the sun slowly set.

The vigil, attended by both students and community members, recognized those killed by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and sister organizations, including the Native Action Coalition, Education and Democracy United (EDU) and the Stanford Asian American Action Committee (SAAAC), hosted the event.  

The vigil comes in response to the recent killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by ICE officers, as well as other incidents of ICE violence across the country.

“Renee Good wasn’t the first person to be killed by ICE, by far. 2025 has been the deadliest year since 2004 for ICE, in terms of the number of people they killed who died in custody,” said Amanda Campos ’26, an SJP member and one of the vigil’s organizers.

The vigil was accompanied by an original artwork display and a sign, presented across the stairs at White Plaza, that read “Justice for Our Neighbors.”

“The idea that I had is really to bring people together, to really let us feel the pain that ICE has inflicted on our communities and let us not just let the deaths of people like Keith Porter and Renee Good, that are so publicized in media, just be another piece of news that we try to repress or forget,” Campos said. 

At the vigil, speakers emphasized the importance of unity during a time of grief. Many speakers also spoke on the connection between ICE-related deaths and deaths in Gaza.

“From Venezuela to Palestine, from ICE to the IDF, all of the systems of oppression are interconnected, connected, most specifically, by the violence of U.S. fascism, U.S. imperialism and U.S. white supremacy,” said a speaker from SAAAC.

Students with immigrant parents provided personal anecdotes about growing up with the fear of losing family members to ICE raids. Speeches ranged from calls to action to moments to acknowledge pain. 

“Your life is conditional when you are undocumented,” said a speaker when recounting their family’s experience. 

“Even Stanford’s administration, they want us to be too busy to care,” Campos said in her speech at the vigil. “This is a vigil, but it is also necessarily a call to action.”

In the days following the shooting, students moved quickly to create a space for collective mourning and solidarity. “We organized this vigil at the earliest moment that we possibly could,” said German Gonzalez ’26, an organizer with SJP.

Speeches from students were accompanied by an opening sunset prayer and a closing musical performance. Campos opened the floor to allow the audience to speak in between speeches. Attendees shared testimonials from immigrant communities across the country, including a poem on grief.  

“[ICE deaths are] horrifying to me as a doctor, as a human being, as a mother, as a wife, and so that’s why I’m here,” said Carol Peyser, an organizer for Stand up for Science and an attendee of the vigil. Peyser is a community member and former professor at Stanford Medical School. 

Towards the end of the vigil, Campos added that SJP is launching a campaign for Stanford to divest from a list of organizations complicit in violence at home and abroad, encouraging attendees to sign a petition to pledge their support. 

“We have to remind each other that we’re in this together and that every life matters,” said Mary Chan, an organizer with Stand up for Science who attended the vigil. 

“When we mourn together, we are connected by our shared humanity,” Gonzalez said in his speech at the vigil.

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