pressure to cut ties with immigration and customs agency.

Some colleges are being pressured to cut ties with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as public outcries arise over the separation of families along the nation’s southern border.

Northeastern University, Johns Hopkins University and Vermont’s system of public colleges have contracts with the immigration agency totaling about $4 million this year for research and training services.

The schools argue that their work has nothing to do with the agency’s role along the border, but some on campus say the agency’s actions clash with school values and that preserving any relationship amounts to a tacit endorsement. Some students and faculty members have been circulating petitions and organizing protests over the contracts.

“People care about what Hopkins stands for,” said Drew Daniel, who teaches English at the Baltimore school and started an online petition opposing its deals with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “You want that degree to stand for a certain set of values, a certain commitment, and I think there’s frustration that this relationship compromises those values.”

The protesters have singled out the agency as the face of the administration’s policy, even though the agency said it had no role in the separation of families.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the protests, but spokesman Matthew Bourke said the policy was created by the Justice Department and enforced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a separate agency under the Department of Homeland Security.

The schools facing backlash are among at least six currently contracted by the agency, and at least 20 that have worked with the agency in the past, according to federal spending data. Their work has ranged from counterterrorism training and evidence testing to leases for campus parking spots.

Activists across the country decried the forced separation of children under President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy toward those who cross the border without authorization. The administration says “under 3,000” children had been separated from their families before it stopped the practice.

Relatively few of the agency’s contracts go to colleges, with far more going to businesses including Motorola and Deloitte, where some employees have also called for a break with the agency. Over the past decade, colleges have received roughly $11.5 million from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, compared with $12 billion that went to businesses, according to federal data.

Johns Hopkins, which has received $6.5 million from the immigration agency, partners to provide leadership training and medical instruction to agency employees. Part of that has included $1 million used to send agency officials to Gettysburg National Battleground for leadership “staff rides” led by Hopkins experts.

Borrowed from the military, the staff rides are a type of exercise meant to teach leadership by analyzing key decisions made in battle.

Dennis O’Shea, a spokesman for Hopkins, said the agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement are part of the university’s broader effort to provide training to several federal agencies. He declined to comment on the petition against the agency, saying officials have not yet received it.

At Northeastern University in Boston, protesters gathered on campus this month calling for an immediate end to the school’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract. The $2.7 million deal supports a research project studying U.S. technology exports that could help terrorists or other criminals abroad. The criminologist leading the project, Glenn Pierce, said it ends this year and won’t be renewed by the agency.

Still, school officials defended the work and rebuffed the idea of turning down research funding.

“Efforts to restrict which federal agencies a faculty member can approach for research funding are antithetical to academic freedom,” said Renata Nyul, a school spokesman. “We hope everyone can agree to support freedom of academic inquiry — most importantly members of our own faculty.”

Others that contracted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement this year include the University of Maryland, which provided hazardous-materials training; Virginia Tech, which was hired to test aluminum confiscated by the immigration agency at a port of entry; and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which says it worked with the agency to prevent harmful drugs from being smuggled into the country. All three contracts expire this year.