Columbia student protester who’s lived in the U.S. since age 7 sues to stop deportation order

Student protesters gather inside their encampment on the Columbia University campus, April 29, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

NEW YORK — Another Columbia University student said Monday that the Trump administration has targeted her for deportation over her pro-Palestinian views, accusing immigration officials in a lawsuit of employing the same tactics used on Mahmoud Khalil and other college activists.

Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old lawful permanent resident who came to the U.S. as a child, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved to deport her after she was arrested March 5 while protesting the Ivy League school’s disciplinary actions against student protesters. News reports at the time identified her as being among a group of protesters arrested after a sit-in at a library on the adjacent Barnard College campus.

Within days of her arrest, Chung said in the lawsuit, ICE officials signed an administrative arrest warrant and went to her parents' residence seeking to detain her.

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 participated in campus protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza. 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 says, “are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike, including Ms. Chung’s speech.”

“Yunseo Chung has engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by NYPD during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College,” a senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. “She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws. Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge.”

A message seeking comment was left for ICE.

Chung’s lawsuit cites the administration’s efforts to deport five other students who’ve spoken out, including Khalil and Momodou Taal, of Cornell University, who received a notice last week to surrender to immigration authorities after he sued on March 15 to preempt deportation efforts.

Taal, 31, a Ph.D. student in Africana studies, is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia.

In a court filing, the Justice Department said Taal’s student visa was revoked before he filed his lawsuit for his alleged involvement in “disruptive protests” that disregarded university policies and created a hostile environment for Jewish students.

But, the Justice Department said, ICE agents had trouble locating him.

Taal’s lawyer, Eric Lee, said Monday that his client is not being required to surrender before a hearing in the lawsuit Tuesday in Syracuse.

Cornell suspended Taal 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 co-plaintiffs argue President Donald Trump’s executive orders spurring the crackdown 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.”

Other students and faculty have had visas revoked or were blocked from entering the U.S. because they attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. The administration has been citing a seldom-invoked legal statute that authorizes the secretary of state to revoke visas of noncitizens who could be considered a threat to U.S. foreign-policy interests.

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

Khalil, who received a master’s degree last semester, served as a negotiator for students as they bargained with Columbia officials over an end to their campus tent encampment last spring. The Trump administration has argued his prominent role in the protests amounted to antisemitic support for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

In newly filed papers, government lawyers said Khalil also failed to disclose his past work with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, his continued employment with the British embassy for Syria, based in Beirut, nor his involvement with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition group of anti-Israel student organizations.

A lawyer for Khalil called the allegations “plainly thin” and said the government would have to prove any omission was willful and materially important.

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.

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By Michael Hill, Jake Offenhartz And Michael R. Sisak

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