US arrests second student, imposes ‘receivership’ on Columbia University

A second student protester was detained by President Donald Trump’s administration, and a deadline has been set for Columbia University, one of the country’s most prestigious campuses, to cede control of one of its academic departments.

Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student at Columbia, was charged by the Department of Homeland Security of overstaying her F-1 student visa in a news release on Friday.

According to the statement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained her for deportation. Ranjani Srinivasan of India, a second foreign student, was denied entry to the program because she “participated in activities supporting Hammas,” a misspelled armed group in Palestine.

Hamas support has been repeatedly confused by the Trump administration’s involvement in protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Additionally, it has accused demonstrators of supporting “terrorists.”

A Palestinian student at Columbia University has been in ICE custody for deportation for the second time in less than a week thanks to Kordia’s arrest. Mahmoud Khalil, a protest spokesperson, was detained on Saturday in both New Jersey and Louisiana, where he was previously held in immigration detention.

According to Khalil’s lawyer, the arrests are intended to stifle free speech rights, and this week he claimed that he has not been able to speak with his client privately, in violation of his constitutional right to legal counsel.

Khalil’s wife is eight months along, and he has a green card and permanent residency in the US. However, Trump’s administration claims it intends to revoke his green card.

“It is a privilege to have a visa to live and study in the United States of America.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated in the news release that when you support violence and terrorism, you should be denied entry and prohibited from doing so.

The Trump administration also made violent arrests and student suspensions against Columbia in the last 24 hours, though.

The administration demanded in a letter published late on Thursday night that Columbia’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) be placed in an “academic receivership,” wherein an outside authority frequently assumes control as retribution for mismanagement.

The university was required to develop a strategy for creating the academic receivership role no later than March 20th in the letter.

According to the letter, “Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government would be harmed if it did not comply.”

One of the demands included abolition of the university’s judicial body for hearing disciplinary proceedings, the removal of the campus’s disciplinary committee, and the adoption of a contentious anti-Semitism definition, which some fear might restrict legitimate criticisms of Israel.

One of the eight campuses that make up the highly acclaimed Ivy League in the northeast, Columbia University is a private school.

However, Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly attacked the university as a result of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2023 and 2024 as students protested Israel’s war, which according to UN experts described as a genocide.

What brought us here?

Following a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, the protests reached their peak last April. Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia at the time, was questioned over allegations that Columbia and other institutions had failed to address anti-Semitism on campus.

The following day, Shafik authorized New York City to enter a camp that student protesters had constructed on Columbia’s East Lawn, making numerous arrests.

From there, tensions grew even more. Students protesters claimed that officials were tampering with anti-Semitism and that their freedom of speech was being violated. In protest of attempts to halt the protest movement, some people occupied a school building, Hamilton Hall.

However, Columbia’s incident set off a number of similar measures across the nation, with police being dispatched to campus to apprehend peaceful protesters. Between April and July, it is thought that more than 3, 000 protesters have been detained.

Trump campaigned for re-election claiming to deport and seek refugee foreign students who attended the demonstrations.

The threats were included in the Republican Party’s 20 pledges to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again,” according to his allies.

Trump immediately signed an executive order pledging to remove foreigners who “hold hostile attitudes” toward US citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles or who support “threats to our national security” on January 20th.

Israel has long supported its Gaza campaign, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 48,524 Palestinians.

Trump has instructed the Justice Department to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities” in the months since taking office.

He also issued a warning on social media this month that he would use force against any campus that holds what he called “illegal protests” (even though he did not specify what that might entail).

Any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests will be shut down by federal funding, according to Trump. “Agitators will be detained, held indefinitely, or permanently re-enter their home country. American students will be permanently barred from the country or detained, depending on the crime.

In a move that was seen as a “warning shot” against all higher education institutions in response to the president’s demands, the Trump administration announced on March 7 that Columbia University would receive $ 400 million in federal grants and contracts.

As a result of the cancellation, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon cited increases in reported anti-Semitism following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.

Jewish students have endured constant violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses since October 7, according to a McMahon-affiliated news release.

If they are going to receive funding from the government, universities must abide by all antidiscrimination laws.

Columbia currently receives about $5 billion in federal grants and contracts, according to the Department of Education. The school instituted a move earlier this week to ban or expel students from antiwar protests.

Trump’s initiatives are criticized.

Some activists have questioned whether the Trump administration is actually trying to stop hate crimes or whether anti-Semitism is being used as a pretext to advance other political objectives.

In protest of Khalil’s arrest, activists from Jewish Voice for Peace and other organizations gathered on Thursday at Trump Tower in New York City while sporting red T-shirts with the slogan “Not in our name.”

Critics worry that Columbia University students’ civil rights may be violated as reports of Homeland Security officials searching dorm rooms surface.

The CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff, wrote on social media on Friday that “we do believe that if you are here, you shouldn’t be arrested, dragged away, and deported for engaging in protests that all of your classmates were perfectly entitled to do.”

The Trump administration justifies the planned deportations by citing a missused section of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The secretary of state has the authority to forbid foreign nationals “in certain circumstances” from entering the US because they “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

However, lawyers and advocates point out that the US Supreme Court has consistently upheld immigrants’ constitutional right to free speech.

Source: Aljazeera