(Excerpts from Inside Higher Ed)

• Students at multiple law schools are pressuring administrators to sever ties with LexisNexis and Westlaw, which they claim help the Department of Homeland Security target undocumented immigrants.
• The LexisNexis and Westlaw research databases are vital for law schools and the students they serve, who will go on to use these tools throughout their legal careers. But contracts with the Department of Homeland Security have students calling for greater scrutiny of LexisNexis and Westlaw and demanding that law schools wield their political power to renounce these ties.
• Students have also expressed a desire for law schools to invest in alternative legal research tools.
• At the heart of the issue is how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deploys these tools. Critics say that ICE uses them to aggregate data from multiple sources to build dossiers on individuals who may be targeted for deportation, stitching together profiles from criminal records, credit and employment history, utility bills, and license plate numbers, among many other data points.
• Given that ICE reportedly uses these legal databases in immigration enforcement, some students say their peers are beholden to programs that work against their own community.
• “If you’re a person that cares about immigration law, or a student who is undocumented, or have parents who are undocumented, you’re basically forced to use these programs,” says Sam Sueoka, a Seattle University School of Law student. “You’re being forced to use a program that is going to perpetuate harm against people you care about, maybe even people in your family.”
• Thomson Reuters, the parent company of LexisNexis and Westlaw, flatly denies that its products are being used in the way that students and legal researchers claim. The company has also established a website that aims to explain the servicesprovided to the U.S. government.