A Columbia University junior and a Cornell University grad student appear to be dodging immigration agents while their lawyers ask judges to block the Trump administration from deporting them for what they say is retaliation for their pro-Palestinian activism. Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia junior from South Korea who holds a green card and has lived in the U.S. for 14 years, asked a federal judge in New York for an order preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting her while she challenges the State Department’s determination that her presence is undermining U.S. foreign policy. ICE has been unable to locate Momodou Taal — a Cornell University graduate student with a student visa and dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia — who filed suit to block President Trump’s sweeping executive orders targeting antisemitism. Homeland security officials told the court they’ve been seeking Taal since March 14, Politico reports. The Justice Department said the State Department canceled Taal’s student visa because he was “involved with disruptive protests and had engaged in an escalating pattern of behavior, disregarding university policies and creating a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
Chung and Taal are asking courts to block the Trump administration from enforcing the president’s executive orders, ostensibly meant to root out antisemitism on college campuses, claiming the directives are a thinly veiled attempt to punish pro-Palestinian activists who took part in campus protests last year. The Chung and Taal cases have not drawn as much attention as that of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of Columbia University campus protests, whom the administration arrested and relocated to Louisiana this month. Like Chung, Khalil is fighting deportation after a similar determination by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. So, too, is Badar Khan Suri, a researcher at Georgetown University who was arrested by Homeland Security officials last week outside his Arlington, Va., home and whisked to Louisiana. The lawsuits by Chung and Taal are the latest in a rapidly-broadening confrontation between the Trump administration and immigrants — lawfully present in the U.S. and charged with no crimes — who are nevertheless being targeted for removal. The State Department claims that Khalil and Suri have “spread propaganda” for Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. but has been the de facto government in Gaza for nearly two decades.
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