Columbia student hunted by ICE sues to prevent deportation

NEW YORK – A 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the US since she was a child sued President Donald Trump and other high-ranking administration officials on March 24 after immigration officials tried to arrest and deport her.

The student, Yunseo Chung, is a legal permanent resident and junior who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school. The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the US hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism.

Administration officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, cited the same rationale in explaining the March

arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the university

and permanent resident who is being held in Louisiana.

Unlike Khalil, Ms Chung does not appear to have been a prominent figure in the demonstrations that shook the school in 2024. But she was one of several students arrested in 2025 in connection with a protest at Barnard College.

Ms Chung, a high school valedictorian who moved to the US with her family from South Korea when she was 7, has not been arrested. She remains in the country.

Her lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan shows the extensive, if so far unsuccessful, efforts by US immigration officials to arrest her. Agents historically prefer to pick up immigrants in jail or prisons. Other types of arrests are more difficult, often requiring hours of research, surveillance and other investigative resources.

But federal agents believed that those efforts were merited in the case of Ms Chung, according to her lawyers at CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials visited several residences on March 13, called for help from federal prosecutors and searched Ms Chung’s university housing.

The involvement of federal prosecutors was particularly notable. According to Ms Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harbouring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to non-citizens present in the United States illegally.

That signalled that the searches were related to a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors into Columbia University. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney-general, has said that the school is under investigation “for harbouring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus”.

Operating under the aegis of a federal investigation could signal a new tactic. ICE officers and agents often are unable to arrest their targets because they do not answer the door, and an administrative warrant does not provide agents access to a home.

The Trump administration has prioritised the detention of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, particularly those who are not legal residents. They have

sought the arrest of Momodou Taal, a doctoral student in Africana studies at Cornell University

, and Ranjani Srinivasan, another Columbia University student who left the country for Canada after learning that her student visa had been revoked.

But the attempted arrest of Ms Chung, like the detention of Khalil, appears to be part of a new front in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown – targeting immigrants who are in the country legally.

In their lawsuit, Ms Chung’s lawyers asked that a judge bar the government from taking enforcement action against Ms Chung or from detaining her, transferring her to another location or removing her from the United States.

They also asked the judge to bar the government from targeting any non-citizen for deportation based on constitutionally protected speech and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

One of Ms Chung’s lawyers, Naz Ahmad, said that the administration’s “efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism”.

“Like many thousands of students nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline,” said Ahmad, a co-director of CLEAR.

“It can’t be the case that a straight-A student who has lived here most of her life can be whisked away and potentially deported, all because she dares to speak up.”

Press representatives for the secretary of state, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ms Chung, who majors in English and gender studies, has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations since 2024. Her lawyers said that she did not speak to reporters, negotiate on behalf of student demonstrators, or in any other way take a leadership position.

She was, however, accused by the university of joining other students in posting flyers that pictured members of the board of trustees with the phrase “wanted for complicity in genocide”. According to the lawsuit, the school did not find that Ms Chung had violated any of its “applicable policies”.

The dizzying sequence of events that appears to have prompted ICE agents to show up at her house appears to have begun earlier in March.

On March 5, Ms Chung protested outside a Barnard College building where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators were holding a sit-in. She was arrested by police officers, given a desk appearance ticket and released.

Four days later – and the day after Khalil was arrested – immigration officials appeared at the home of Ms Chung’s parents.

Around that time, according to the lawsuit, someone identifying herself as “Audrey with the police” texted Ms Chung. When a lawyer for Ms Chung called the number, the woman said that she was an agent with ICE, that the State Department was free to revoke Ms Chung’s residency status and that there was an administrative warrant for her arrest.

At the same time, Columbia University’s public safety office e-mailed Ms Chung to inform her that the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan had been in touch, repeating that ICE officials were seeking Ms Chung’s arrest.

On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor’s office, told Mr Ahmad, Ms Chung’s attorney, that the secretary of state, Mr Rubio, had revoked Ms Chung’s visa.

Mr Ahmad responded that Ms Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Mr Carbone responded that Mr Rubio had “revoked that” as well.

The conversation echoed an exchange between Khalil’s lawyers and the immigration agents who arrested him and who did not initially appear to be aware of his residency status.

After his arrest, Khalil was swiftly transferred, first to New Jersey and ultimately to Louisiana, where he has been detained since.

The statute that the Trump administration used to justify his detention and Ms Chung’s potential deportation says that the secretary of state can move against non-citizens whose presence he has reasonable grounds to believe threatens the country’s foreign policy agenda. Homeland security officials have since added other allegations against Khalil.

Mr Rubio’s memo targeting Khalil also included Ms Chung’s name, according to a person with knowledge of its contents.

In Ms Chung’s lawsuit, her lawyers accused the government of obtaining warrants “under false pretenses”, suggesting that the search under the harbouring statute was merely a pretext for an attempt to detain Ms Chung and another student whom the suit did not name.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on the claims involving the office and Mr Carbone. NYTIMES