Immigration officials arrest second person involved in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia
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NEW YORK — Federal immigration authorities arrested a second person who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, and have revoked the visa of another student, they announced Friday.
Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested by immigration officers for overstaying her student visa, the Department of Homeland Security said. Kordia’s visa was terminated in January 2022 for “lack of attendance,” the department said. She was previously arrested for her involvement in protests at Columbia in April 2024, the agency added.
The Trump administration also revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Columbia University, for allegedly “advocating for violence and terrorism.” Srinivasan opted to “self-deport” Tuesday, five days after her visa was revoked, the department said.
Officials didn’t immediately say what evidence they had that Srinivasan had advocated violence. In recent days, Trump administration officials have used those terms to describe people who criticized Israel’s military action in Gaza.
Columbia University’s campus has been thrust into chaos following the arrest Sunday of Mahmoud Khalil, a well-known Palestinian activist who helped lead last spring’s protests. On Thursday, ICE agents also visited the university-owned residences of two other students at Columbia University, but did not make any arrests.
As Trump begins dismantling the Education Department, student loan services, civil rights enforcement and funding for disadvantaged students remain in limbo.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the Trump administration is expecting to revoke more student visas in the coming days.
Speaking Friday after the Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada, Rubio said that the administration would keep looking for people with student visas whom they wouldn’t have let into the country “had we known they were going to do what they’ve done.”
“But now that they’ve done it, we’re going to get rid of them,” he said.
Khalil was rushed from New York to Louisiana last weekend in a manner that left the outspoken Columbia University graduate student feeling like he was being kidnapped, his lawyers wrote in an updated lawsuit seeking his immediate release.
The lawyers described in detail what happened to Khalil as he was flown to Louisiana by agents who he said never identified themselves. Once there, he was left to sleep in a bunker with no pillow or blanket, the lawyers said. Top U.S. officials cheered the effort to deport a man his lawyers say sometimes became the “public face” of student protests on Columbia’s campus against Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
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The filing late Thursday in Manhattan federal court was the result of a federal judge’s Wednesday order that they finally be allowed to speak with Khalil.
The lawyers said his treatment by federal authorities from Saturday, when he was first arrested, to Monday reminded Khalil of when he left Syria shortly after the forced disappearance of his friends there during a period of arbitrary detention in 2013.
“Throughout this process, Mr. Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped,” the lawyers wrote of his treatment.
Earlier this week, President Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
In court papers, lawyers for the Justice Department said Kahlil was detained under a law allowing Rubio to remove someone from the country if he has reasonable grounds to believe their presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.
Trump and Rubio were added as defendants in the lawsuit seeking to free Khalil.
The government attorneys asked a judge to toss out the lawsuit or transfer it to New Jersey or Louisiana, saying jurisdiction belongs in the locations where Khalil has been held since his detention.
According to the lawsuit, Khalil repeatedly asked to speak to a lawyer after the U.S. permanent resident with no criminal history was arrested by federal agents as he and his wife were returning to Columbia’s residential housing, where they lived, after dinner at a friend’s home.
Confronted by agents for the Department of Homeland Security, Khalil briefly telephoned his lawyer before he was taken to FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan, the lawsuit said.
It was there that Khalil saw an agent approach another agent and say, “the White House is requesting an update,” the lawyers wrote.
At some point early Sunday, Khalil was taken, handcuffed and shackled, to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., a privately run facility where he spent the night in a cold waiting room for processing, his request for a blanket denied, the lawsuit said.
When he reached the front of the line for processing, he was told his processing would not occur after all because he was being transported by immigration authorities, it said.
Put in a van, Khalil noticed that one of the agents received a text message instructing that Khalil was not to use his phone, the lawsuit said.
At 2:45 p.m. Sunday, he was put on an American Airlines flight from Kennedy International Airport to Dallas, where he was put on a second flight to Alexandria, La. He arrived at 1 a.m. Monday and a police car took him to the Louisiana Detention Facility in Jena, La., it said.
At the facility, he now worries about his pregnant wife and is “also very concerned about missing the birth of his first child,” the lawsuit said.
In April, Khalil was to begin a job and receive health benefits that the couple was counting on to cover costs related to the birth and care of the child, it added.
“It is very important to Mr. Khalil to be able to continue his protected political speech, advocating and protesting for the rights of Palestinians — both domestically and abroad,” the lawsuit said, noting that Khalil was planning to speak on a panel at the upcoming premiere in Copenhagen, Denmark, of a documentary in which he is featured.
At a hearing Wednesday, Khalil’s attorneys said they had not been allowed any attorney-client-protected communications with Khalil since his arrest and had been told they could speak to him in 10 days. Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered that at least one conversation be permitted on Wednesday and Thursday.
Neumeister writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz in New York and Matthew Lee in La Malbaie, Quebec contributed to this report.
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