As you may have heard, Janet Napolitano is leaving Homeland Security to head the University of California system. Students who favor immigration reform are less than pleased.

Laurel Rosenhall of the Kansas City Star reports.

Opposition rises to Janet Napolitano as next UC president

Objection is mounting to the nomination of Janet Napolitano as the next University of California president, with students and immigration activists planning to protest against her at Thursday’s meeting of the governing Board of Regents in San Francisco.

Napolitano, a former governor and attorney general of Arizona, announced Friday she would step down as President Barack Obama’s U.S. Homeland Security secretary after her nomination to UC is confirmed. She is expected to attend the meeting, where regents are scheduled to vote on her nomination.

As the head of the national Department of Homeland Security, Napolitano is the face of the nation’s immigration policy, a role that is making her unpopular with some UC activists. In her first two years as Homeland Security secretary, the United States deported more undocumented immigrants than ever before, the federal government announced in 2011. She also oversaw the so-called “Secure Communities” program that allows law enforcement and immigration officials to share fingerprints of arrestees.

UC Irvine student Andrea Gaspar, 22, said many students are upset by the Secure Communities program and object to its architect taking the reins at UC.

“A lot of families were being affected and harassed and searched for documentation, for their background and they were profiled,” Gaspar said, adding that immigrant students fear that they will be unwelcome at UC with Napolitano at the head.

“It’s going to be hard to be part of the university knowing that the head of the university has harassed your family and your friends,” she said.