Columbia student protester who came to the US as a kid sues to stop deportation order

On March 10, Chung said, a federal law enforcement official told her lawyer that her lawful permanent resident status was being “revoked.” Three days later, Chung said, law enforcement agents executed search warrants at two Columbia-owned residences, including her dormitory, seeking travel and immigration records, and other documents.

Chung has lived in the U.S. since emigrating from South Korea with her parents at age 7, according to her lawsuit.

The Columbia junior is seeking a court order to block the Trump administration's efforts to deport noncitizens who speak out in support of Palestinians. She is asking a judge to prevent the administration from detaining her, moving her out of New York City or removing her from the country while her lawsuit plays out.

“ICE’s shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech,” said Chung's lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan.

Officials at the highest echelons of government, the lawsuit said, “are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung’s speech.”

Messages seeking comment were left for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.

Chung's lawsuit cites the administration's efforts to deport five other students who've spoken out, including Khalil and Momodou Taal, a Cornell University student who has been asked to surrender to immigration authorities after he sued to preempt deportation efforts.

Taal, a Ph.D. student in Africana studies, got a notice Friday telling him to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, his lawyers said. The agency didn't set a deadline.

Taal, 31, filed a lawsuit March 15 seeking to block enforcement of executive orders by President Donald Trump that have led to a growing crackdown on international students who participated in campus protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Taal is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia.

Some students and faculty have had their visas revoked or been blocked from entering the U.S. because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians in the conflict with Israel.

In one of the most high-profile cases, the Justice Department detained Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, and told him his green card was being revoked because of his participation in protests.

The government has also detained a scholar at Georgetown University and refused to let a professor at Brown University's medical school enter the U.S.

In a court filing, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers said Taal's student visa had also been revoked, even before he filed his lawsuit, but ICE agents had trouble locating him.

The revocation is based on Taal's alleged involvement in “disruptive protests,” disregarding university policies and creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, the government said.

An attorney for Taal, Eric Lee, said Monday that his client is not being required to surrender before Tuesday's scheduled hearing on the lawsuit in Syracuse.

Taal was suspended from Cornell for a second time last fall after a group of pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a campus career fair. He has limited access to the upstate New York campus as he continues his studies remotely.

In his lawsuit, Taal and his co-plaintiffs argue that Trump's executive orders violate the free speech rights of international students and scholars. Taal claims he was at the career fair protest for five minutes and had faced no criminal charges.

“If the First Amendment does not protect the right to attend a demonstration, what’s left?” Lee said. “Not much.”

In the case involving Khalil, government lawyers filed new paperwork saying that besides participating in protests, Khalil had not disclosed his past work with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees and his continued employment with the British embassy for Syria, based in Beirut. They also said he did not disclose his involvement with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition group of anti-Israel student organizations.

Ramzi Kassem, an attorney for Khalil, called the allegations “plainly thin,” noting the government would have to prove any omission was both willful and materially important.

“It’s very obviously a rearguard action to shore up their immigration case,” he said. “This doesn’t change the fact that this is still a case about Mr. Khalil’s pro-Palestinian speech and the fact that the government doesn’t like it.”

The Trump administration had previously also argued that Khalil's prominent role in the Columbia University protests amounted to antisemitic support for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Khalil, who received his master’s degree from Columbia’s school of international affairs last semester, served as a negotiator for students as they bargained with university officials over an end to the tent encampment erected on campus last spring.

The administration's argument rests on a seldom-invoked legal statute that authorizes the secretary of state to revoke the visa of any noncitizen whose presence in the United States could be considered a threat to the country’s foreign-policy interests.

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Hill reported from Albany, New York. Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.