On March 24th, we learned of another student demonstrator targeted by the Trump regime for anti-genocide protest, when a junior at Columbia University, Yunseo Chung, sued numerous administration officials seeking a temporary restraining order "barring the government from detaining her based on her protected speech and in the absence of independent, legitimate grounds." Cheung, a legal permanent resident who has been living in the US since she was 7 years old, was targeted for helping set up a protest encampment on campus, handing out some fliers, and her mere participation in a sit-in at Bernard College to protest the expulsion of students who participated in the anti-genocide campus protests last year.

1) https://www.commondreams.org/news/yunseo-chung

Another Columbia Protester Targeted for Deportation Sues Trump

"The 21-year-old, who moved from South Korea to the United States with her family at age 7, participated in some student protests on Columbia's campus "related to Israel's military campaign in Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians," states the complaint. "Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests. She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns."

Earlier this month, she was arrested by the New York Police Department at a student sit-in "to protest what she believed to be the excessive punishments meted out by the Columbia administration to student protesters facing campus disciplinary proceedings," the document details. "Mere days later... the federal government began a series of unlawful efforts to arrest, detain, and remove Ms. Chung from the country because of her protected speech."

The suit asserts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) "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," specifically, "university students who speak out in solidarity with Palestinians and who are critical of the Israeli government's ongoing military campaign in Gaza or the pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. government and other U.S. institutions."

Yeung, who went into hiding to avoid ICE detention as part of a regime act of blatantly unconstitutional ideological policing, was ultimately able to secure a restraining order to prevent her arrest while she continues to fight deportation attempts despite her status as a legal permanent resident.

2) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/columbia-gaza-protester-yunseo-chung-lawsuit

Student who sued Trump takes powerful stand against ‘constant dread’ of deportation threats

"On 5 March, Chung – a 21-year-old student at Columbia University – attended a sit-in to protest the expulsion of several students involved in pro-Palestinian activism at the famed New York university. Four days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents showed up at her parents’ home.

When they couldn’t find her there, Ice sought help from federal prosecutors and searched her dormitory – using a warrant that cited a criminal law against “harboring noncitizens”. They revoked her green card and accused her of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests.

On Monday, Chung sued Donald Trump and other high-ranking administrations to stop their targeting of her and other students. And on Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport Chung, saying “nothing in the record” indicated that Chung posed a danger to the community."

Soon after the regime's ICE abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, news broke that Trump's DHS had targeted two other students who had protested or spoken out online against Israel's genocide in Gaza and attended Columbia university; arresting Leqaa Kordia for overstaying her student visa, and revoking the visa of PhD candidate Ranjani Srinivasan, who ultimately self-deported (so, fled) to Canada. At roughly the same time, it was reported that DHS had executed two search warrants for rooms on the Columbia campus.

1) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rnzp4ye5zo

US arrests second pro-Palestinian Columbia University protester

"US immigration authorities have announced the arrest of a second activist who participated in pro-Palestinian protests last spring at Columbia University in New York City.

Leqaa Kordia, who is a Palestinian and from the West Bank, was arrested in New Jersey, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement on Friday.

The statement said another student, Ranjani Srinivasani, who has Indian citizenship, chose to "self-deport" by leaving the US earlier this week.

This follows the arrest of Columbia campus activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained on Saturday in New York before being flown to a jail in Louisiana."

2) https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/27/columbia-let-me-down-how-indian-scholar-expelled-by-trump-fled-the-us

‘Columbia let me down’: How Indian scholar expelled by Trump fled the US

"It was the start of 10 days of confusion and fear for Srinivasan that culminated in her name and grainy airport camera image making global headlines after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused her of being a “terrorist sympathiser” on X.

By then, Srinivasan was in Canada, staying with friends and family, having flown out of New York on March 11, four days before Noem’s post, after concluding that she could be arrested – even though the US government has still not made clear whether she is accused of any crime. She rejects the suggestion that she is supportive of terrorists, but assumes her visa was revoked because of online support for Palestine as Israel’s brutal war on Gaza continues."

3) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/14/homeland-security-search-columbia-students

Homeland security agents search two Columbia University students’ rooms

"Agents from the Department of Homeland Security conducted searches in two Columbia University students’ rooms on Thursday night, marking the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on some American universities.

Also marking that escalation: Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, said on Friday that the federal justice department would examine whether last year’s student protests at Columbia over Israel’s military strikes on Gaza violated terrorism laws. Blanche also said the justice department would examine whether Columbia’s handling of the demonstrations violated civil rights law as Donald Trump’s White House follows through on its self-stated “mission to end antisemitism in this country”.

The university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, addressed the school community in a statement, saying she was “heartbroken” to inform them that “there were federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two University residences” on Thursday night.

Armstrong confirmed that no arrests were made, no items were removed and no further action was taken at the private Ivy League college in New York."

Please not that while Kordia's student visa had indeed expired, and the warrants executed at the Columbia residences were signed by a judge, the larger pattern of using DHS, ICE, and the regime's immigration powers to suppress civil rights, terrorize the students of Columbia, and target international students protesting a US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, was already quite obvious by this point; a fact that the Trump administration didn't deny, but instead bragged about.