NEW YORK (AP) – Another Columbia University student said Monday that the Trump administration targeted her for deportation against her pro-Palestinian views, accusing her in a lawsuit that employs the same tactics used by immigration officials Mahmoud Khalil Other university activists.
Yoon Zeo Chung, a 21-year-old legal permanent resident, said U.S. immigration and customs enforcement agencies moved to expel her after being arrested on March 5th after protesting disciplinary action against student protesters. News reports from the time identified her as a group of protesters who were arrested. Sit down At the library on the adjacent Bernard College campus.
Within days of her arrest, Chung in the lawsuit saw ICE officials sign an administrative arrest warrant and go to the residence of their parents who were trying to detain her.
On March 10, federal law enforcement officials told her lawyer that her legal permanent resident status has been “revoked.” Three days later, Chung said law enforcement executed search warrants in two Columbia-owned homes seeking records of travel and immigration.
According to her lawsuit, Jung has been living in the United States since moving from Korea with his parents at the age of seven.
Columbia juniors are seeking a court order to block the Trump administration’s efforts to deport non-citizens who speak out in support of Palestinians. She asks the judge to prevent the administration from detaining her, and move her out of New York City and take her out of the country while filing a lawsuit.
“Ice’s shocking actions against Mr. Chong form part of a larger pattern of US government’s attempts to suppress constitutionally protected protests and other forms of speech,” said Chong’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan.
The lawsuit, the highest class of government officials, said they were “trying to use immigration enforcement as a BL arrogance to curb speeches they dislike, including Mr. Chan’s speech.”
Messages seeking comment remained with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
Chung’s lawsuit cites the administration’s efforts to deport five other students who spoke out, including Cornell University students Khalil and Momodou Taal, who were asked to surrender to immigration authorities after suing for deportation efforts.
Tar, a PhD student at Africana Studies, was informed on Friday to tell him to report to immigration and customs enforcement agents, his lawyer said. The agency did not set a deadline.
Tar, 31, filed a lawsuit on March 15, sought to block President Donald Trump’s enforcement of executive orders that led to an increase in crackdown on international students who participated in campus protests against Israeli military actions in Gaza. Tar is a citizen of the UK and Gambia.
Some students and faculty members were blocked from revoking their visas or entering the United States due to demonstrations or publicly expressing against Palestinians in the conflict with Israel.
In one of the most well-known cases, the Department of Justice detained Halil, a Columbian graduate student, and told him that his green card had been revoked to participate in the protest.
The government also detained scholars from Georgetown University and refused to join the US as professors at Brown University’s medical school.
In a court application, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys said Tar’s student visa had also been revoked even before he filed the lawsuit, but Ice Agent had a hard time finding him.
The revocation is based on Tar’s alleged involvement in “destructive protests,” which ignores university policies and creates a hostile environment for Jewish students, the government said.
Tar’s lawyer, Eric Lee, said Monday that his client would not need to surrender before a scheduled hearing on Tuesday’s Syracuse case.
Tar was suspended for the second time from Cornell last fall after a group of pro-Palestinian activists disrupt the campus career fair. He continues to study remotely, and access to upstate New York campuses is limited.
In his lawsuit, Tar and his joint vice-confession alleges that Trump’s executive order violates the rights of international students and academics to free speech. Tar has not faced criminal charges, claiming he was in the career fair protest for five minutes.
“If the First Amendment doesn’t protect your right to attend demonstrations, what remains?” Lee said. “Not much.”
In the case involving Halil, government lawyers submitted new documents that in addition to participating in the protest, Halil had not revealed his past work with the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees and continued employment with the Beirut-based British embassy. They also said he did not disclose his involvement with Columbia University’s Apartheid Dibust, a coalition group of anti-Israel student organizations.
Ramji Qassem, the lawyer for Khalil, called the allegations “clearly thin,” noting that the government must prove that the omission is intentional and materially important.
“It’s obviously a rearguard action to bolster their immigration cases,” he said. “This does not change the fact that this is still an example of Mr. Halil’s pro-Palestinian speech and the fact that the government doesn’t like it.”
The Trump administration previously argued that Halil’s prominent role in the Columbia University protests belonged to anti-Semitism support for Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group. Halil, who earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International Affairs last semester, served as a negotiator for students who negotiated with university officials by finishing the campus campus campus last spring.
The administration’s argument is based on a rarely voke legal law that grants the Secretary of State to revoke non-citizen visas whose presence in the United States could be seen as a threat to the country’s diplomatic interests.
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Hill was reported from Albany, New York. Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.
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