A group of students, faculty and activists plan to hold a protest at Northeastern University Wednesday following the university's rejection of demands to end a research contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Northeastern currently holds a $7.7 million contract with ICE, which the university says funds data mapping research unrelated to immigration enforcement.

But demonstrators are calling on the universities to sever all ties with the agency, citing the use of ICE detention centers to hold parents separated from their children.

"Right now at this point in history, it's unethical to sell ICE a copy machine or buy them a coffee," said Boston-based activist Evan Greer, an organizer of the planned protest.

The demonstration comes after the publication of an open letter which has garnered nearly 1,900 signatures and calls on Northeastern to end the research contract.

"Having any kind of contract with ICE at this moment in history is irresponsible and immoral," the letter says.

Professor Glenn Pierce, who is leading the research project, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the research consists of data analysis on the export of technologies that could be used to create weapons. And the university has defended the funding agreement, describing its continuation as a matter of academic freedom.

"This research grant, obtained by a Northeastern University professor during the Obama administration, is for data research to prevent the import and export of weapons of mass destruction," Northeastern University Vice President of Communications Renata Nyul wrote in an email to MassLive. "While we support the right and the freedom to protest, we hope that those who are planning to join this particular protest will take the time to learn the facts."

Greer, who is also the deputy director of the digital liberty advocacy group Fight for the Future, said she is skeptical that ICE would not use the data analysis tools at work in the research to track immigrants.

"The idea that they can teach ICE these methodologies and they'll only use it for these purposes, that's not how the science works," Greer said.

ICE was created in 2003, under the same post-9/11 law that established the Department of Homeland Security. For 15 years it has enforced immigration laws within U.S. borders, tracking, arresting and deporting hundreds of thousands of unauthorized immigrants per year.

And while the agency's tactics have long drawn the ire of immigrant rights advocates, calls for its abolition were largely limited to left-wing activists, who pointed to ICE's history of detaining and removing people with no criminal history aside from misdemeanor immigration violations.

That changed this year, when the administration of President Donald Trump implemented a "zero tolerance" policy for unauthorized border crossings that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their parents. Photographs of young immigrants in cages and an audio recording of distraught children sparked widespread outrage, and calls for the replacement of ICE went mainstream.

"I believe that any connection to ICE, however tenuous, after their participation in separating families at the border, amounts to collusion with their human rights violations," said Mary Annas, an English Department faculty member at Northeastern.

At least nine Democratic members of Congress have indicated they could support abolishing the agency, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jim McGovern, who have called for replacing the agency in favor of a different system of immigration enforcement.

"Right now there's clear and growing political movement to get rid of ICE completely," Greer said. "Institutions like Northeastern have political power. They have the ability to use that power for good or to maintain the status quo."