A civil liberties group told UCLA on Monday that the university should not stop a conservative student group from identifying demonstrators who protested a United States Department of Homeland Security lawyer’s campus event.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression – which advocates for free speech on college campuses – condemned an email sent by Bayrex Martí, the assistant dean for student affairs at the UCLA School of Law, which encouraged the UCLA Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, to not publicize protesters’ identities. About 50 people disrupted an event hosted by the Federalist Society that featured DHS general counsel James Percival on April 21.

Martí added in the email, obtained by the Daily Bruin, that the Federalist Society could face disciplinary action for identifying protesters.

[Related: Demonstrators protest UCLA event hosting DHS General Counsel James Percival]

Videos of the demonstrators have amassed nearly two million views on X. Some users have replied to the videos – originally posted by UCLA Law alumnus Yitzchok “Yitzy” Frankel – asking for the protesters to be identified. FIRE alleged in its letter that Martí’s email raises free speech concerns, adding that no one in the video had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

“As is abundantly clear from the posted videos, the event was held in a large university lecture hall with a large audience of students and faculty present, any of whom could report publicly what occurred in the room,” FIRE program counsel Jessie Appleby said in an April 27 letter to Waterstone.

Martí said in a Wednesday email to Weinberg – after FIRE published its letter – that his original email was unclear, adding that sharing the names of students would not violate UCLA’s Student Conduct Code.

“It was not my intent to issue a warning,” Martí said in the email obtained by the Daily Bruin. “I only meant to flag that if those students were later targeted or subjected to misconduct, they might respond to that conduct. I wasn’t suggesting that protected speech should be restricted because of how others might react.”

FIRE urged the university to send a response to the letter by Wednesday to affirm that the Federalist Society’s UCLA chapter and its members would not face any disciplinary action. UCLA did not immediately respond to questions about if it had responded to FIRE’s letter.

Throughout the hour-long event – at which Percival only answered prescreened questions – protesters yelled, booed and held up posters that said “Stop caging children” and “Stop killing people.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – an agency within DHS – arrested 300% more people between December 2025 and January 2026 than during the same period the year prior as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, according to the American Immigration Council. Two-thirds of the December 2025 arrests were of people with no criminal record, according to data compiled by the council.

The number of beds holding ICE detainees increased from a daily average of 13,000 in late 2024 to more than 43,000 in a one-month period in 2025, according to the Deportation Data Project – a collaborative led by researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley that uses both public data and information obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. ICE has not updated its public Enforcement and Removal Operations database since January 2025.

Protesters walked out of Percival’s talk after 45 minutes, when the event’s moderator said there would be no live Q&A. More than 150 demonstrators then gathered in Shapiro Courtyard to condemn Percival and ICE.

A UCLA School of Law spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the school regrets any lack of clarity in Martí’s email. UCLA is committed to upholding the First Amendment, the spokesperson added in the statement.

“UCLA School of Law also encourages students to engage one another with respect and care,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

Percival said in a Fox News interview April 23 that he had anticipated a hostile reaction to the event but went through with the talk out of a feeling of obligation to conservative students. He added that UCLA failed to maintain decorum during the event, which he said was intended to promote the free exchange of ideas.

Percival declined the Daily Bruin’s request for an interview at the event.

“I was once a conservative student on a liberal campus, and whenever the conservatives came to speak, I always valued that very much,” Percival said in the Fox News interview. “It was just unfortunate that those students were deprived of that opportunity.”