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Columbia Student Hunted by ICE Sues to Prevent Deportation

Columbia students organize dueling memorials and rallies in New York City, both for Israel and Palestine on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Columbia University garnered international news when student activists set up Palestine solidarity encampments on campus. (Alex Kent)
By Jonah E. Bromwich </p><p>and Hamed Aleaziz New York Times

NEW YORK – A 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the United States since she was a child sued President Donald Trump and other high-ranking administration officials on Monday after immigration officials tried to arrest and deport her.

The student, Yunseo Chung, is a legal permanent resident and junior who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school. The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism.

Administration officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, cited the same rationale in explaining the arrest this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the university and permanent resident who is being held in Louisiana.

Unlike Khalil, Chung does not appear to have been a prominent figure in the demonstrations that shook the school last year. But she was one of several students arrested this year in connection with a protest at Barnard College.

Chung, a high school valedictorian who moved to the United States with her family from South Korea when she was 7, has not been arrested. She remains in the country.

Her lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan shows the extensive, if so far unsuccessful, efforts by U.S. immigration officials to arrest her. Agents historically prefer to pick up immigrants in jail or prisons. Other types of arrests are more difficult, often requiring hours of research, surveillance and other investigative resources.

But federal agents believed that those efforts were merited in the case of Chung, according to her lawyers at CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials visited several residences March 13, called for help from federal prosecutors and searched Chung’s university housing.

In their lawsuit, Chung’s lawyers asked that a judge bar the government from taking enforcement action against Chung or from detaining her, transferring her to another location or removing her from the United States. They also asked the judge to bar the government from targeting any noncitizen for deportation based on constitutionally protected speech and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

One of Chung’s lawyers, Naz Ahmad, said that the administration’s “efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism.”

“Like many thousands of students nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline,” said Ahmad, a co-director of CLEAR. “It can’t be the case that a straight-A student who has lived here most of her life can be whisked away and potentially deported, all because she dares to speak up.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.