Judge orders US to stop attempts to deport Columbia undergraduate

By Santul Nerkar and Jonah E. Bromwich

A federal judge earlier this week ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport a 21-year old Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The administration began seeking to arrest the student, Yunseo Chung, this month, according to a lawsuit filed by Chung’s lawyers.

The judge, Naomi Buchwald, said during a hearing in Manhattan federal court Tuesday that “nothing in the record” indicated that Chung posed a danger to the community or a “foreign-policy risk” or had communicated with terrorist organizations.

Chung is a legal permanent resident. She was not a prominent participant in demonstrations on Columbia’s campus; she was arrested along with several other students this month at a protest at Barnard College, the Manhattan university’s sister school.

A high school valedictorian who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7, she has not been detained by federal agents, and her lawyers have declined to comment on her whereabouts.

Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for Chung and co-director of CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York, said at a news conference after the hearing that his client “remained a resident of the Southern District of New York” and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not been able to find her. During the hearing, he said she was “keeping up with her coursework.”

Chung expressed her relief at the judge’s ruling in a statement Tuesday evening. “After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” she said, adding that she was grateful to her legal team, as well as professors, students and staff members at Columbia who she said “have given me strength at every turn.”

The Trump administration has cited a rarely used legal statute to justify its mission to detain and deport Chung. The government argues that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy goal of stopping the spread of antisemitism.

Buchwald’s order said if the government were to try and detain Chung under the basis of a different statute, it must “provide sufficient advance notice” to her and her attorneys.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had offered the same rationale it is using in the Chung case after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of a Columbia master’s program who is detained in Louisiana.

Khalil was arrested before his lawyers were able to petition a judge in his defense. Chung, by contrast, sued while she was still free, and Buchwald moved swiftly Tuesday without explicitly mentioning the Khalil case.

“No trips to Louisiana here,” Buchwald said, and barred transferring Chung away from the Southern District of New York.

Kassem said that the court had done the “just and fair thing,” and that the government was trying to silence pro-Palestinian activism.

“She’s a college junior doing what generations of college students before have done, which is speak up and protest,” Kassem said.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Monday that Chung’s conduct had been “concerning” and mentioned her arrest by the New York Police Department at what it called a “pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College.” She was issued a desk appearance ticket on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration and released.

The statement said that ICE would “investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.” They did not immediately respond to a request to provide evidence that Chung had supported Hamas, and press representatives for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Buchwald’s decision.

ICE officials tried hard to arrest Chung, according to her lawsuit. Federal agents visited her parents’ home, texted Chung directly and, after federal prosecutors became involved, searched two residences on the Columbia campus.

The search warrants, which were included in court filings, cited a criminal law that targets those who shelter noncitizens present in the United States illegally.