by Phoebe Huss / Cal-Matters / July 31, 2026
Summary: Following a CalMatters investigation, students and faculty at UC San Diego protested against campus police for collaborating with Border Patrol through a federal grant program. The university will stop participating in the program and aiding patrols, sources and internal documents confirm.
A California public university cut ties with a federal program that paid for campus police to aid Border Patrol, within weeks of CalMatters revealing the decade-long partnership.
Operation Stonegarden, a grant managed by the Department of Homeland Security, allocates an average of $11 million each year for California law enforcement agencies to work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its subagency Border Patrol on border security missions. Dozens of police forces throughout the state receive the grant, including campus police at UC San Diego, a recipient since around 2012.
On Feb. 10, a CalMatters article explained how UC San Diego police used the grant to patrol sections of the coastline near campus, which quickly set off an uproar among students who felt it placed undocumented and international students at risk. By Feb. 26, after students emailed complaints and threatened to hold a public rally, student Aryan Dixit said the campus police chief, Lamine Secka, agreed to leave the grant program in a one-on-one meeting.
Melinda Battenberg, a spokesperson at UC San Diego, declined to confirm whether campus police left the grant program. However, internal emails sent in March from a university vice chancellor, Niraj Dangoria, to Patrick Velasquez, a retired university employee and Chicano education advocacy leader, that were reviewed by CalMatters additionally confirmed that the college intended to cease using the grant and has no plans to reapply in the future. In May, Lt. Michael Gonzales of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, which manages Stonegarden-funded operations in the San Diego area, told CalMatters the university will not be involved in future grant operations.
Concern quickly spread
Daniel Negrete, a fourth-year business economics student at UC San Diego, said he found it “crazy” his campus maintained a working relationship with Border Patrol.
Once the news broke, there was a lot of on-campus concern, he added. Students at a Feb. 18 anti-ICE walkout criticized the university’s relationship with Homeland Security, according to UC San Diego’s student newspaper, The Guardian.
“I was… shocked that the university was letting this happen,” Negrete said. “There’s no way that at least someone in higher administration wasn’t aware of this.”
According to a 2025 grant document, Operation Stonegarden enhances collaboration between federal and local law enforcement to secure borders. The program also promotes information sharing, including through regular meetings and mandatory reports.
Since its 2006 founding, the grant has raised concerns about privacy and adherence to California’s sanctuary law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, asked President Donald Trump to end Stonegarden in a 2025 memo, adding that surveillance technology companies encourage police to join the program to get them to buy their products.
Patrick Dobbins, a UC San Diego police sergeant and the university’s designated Stonegarden coordinator, told CalMatters in November 2025 that the university used the grant to pay for officers to work overtime on border patrols. He added that the grant was used to promote health and safety.
Every year since 2020, Homeland Security requested grant recipients to prioritize training officers as immigration agents, though that is illegal in California under the sanctuary law. In 2025 and 2026, became the grant’s overall emphasis.
Dangoria wrote in a March email to Velasquez that the university’s Stonegarden funds are used “for operations focused on drug and human trafficking and not immigration enforcement.”
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