Korean-American Student Sues to Block Deportation Over Pro-Palestine Activism

Washington (Quds News Network)- A Korean-American Columbia University student, who is a legal permanent US resident, sued President Donald Trump and other high-ranking administration officials on Monday to prevent her deportation over her pro-Palestine activism, a court filing showed.

Yunseo Chung, 21, has lived in the US since she was seven, but her legal team was informed two weeks ago that her lawful permanent resident status was being revoked, according to the court filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, The New York Times reported.

Chung has not yet been arrested. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials visited several residences, called for help from federal prosecutors and searched Chung’s university housing on March 13.

Chung is a junior who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school. The Trump administration is claiming that her presence in the US hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism.

Actions against Chung “form part of a larger pattern of attempted US government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech,” Monday’s lawsuit said.

“The government’s repression has focused specifically on university students who speak out in solidarity with Palestinians and who are critical of the Israeli government’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.”

The student was one of several students arrested this year in connection with a protest at Barnard College.

According to Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harboring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to noncitizens present in the United States illegally. The Times said that signaled 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 harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”

In their lawsuit, Chung’s lawyers asked that a judge bar the government from taking enforcement action against 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 noncitizen for deportation based on constitutionally protected speech and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

One of 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, one of her lawyers at CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York.

“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.”

According to The Times, a senior press representative for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Chung had “engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by N.Y.P.D. during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College. She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”

The statement added that Chung would have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge and said that ICE would “investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.”

She was accused by the university of joining other students in posting fliers 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 Chung had violated any of its “applicable policies.”

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 on the misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration and released.

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

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

On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor’s office, told Ahmad that the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had revoked Chung’s visa. Ahmad responded that Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Carbone responded that Rubio had “revoked that” as well.

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

Administration officials, including Rubio, cited the same calims in explaining the arrest this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the university and permanent resident who is being held in Louisiana. Khail was arrested on March 8 by ICE agnets over his pro-Palestine activism at campus. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him.

In a post on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump described the arrest of Khalil as “the first arrest of many to come”.

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said.

Columbia University also lost $400 million in federal funding after being named on a list of schools accused of failure to address antisemitism. 60 universities could also face funding cuts if federal investigations show evidence that they have permitted antisemitic behavior.

As he campaigned for a second term in the White House, Trump pledged to stop the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted after Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza and deport any foreign students involved.

Upon taking office, he began to issue executive actions signalling he would carry out his threats.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in a White House fact sheet.

“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Earlier, Yale University suspended a pro-Palestine Iranian scholar, Helyeh Doutaghi, from its law school after a Jewish news website, which uses AI to generate articles, accused her of being a member of a ‘terrorist group.’ Doutaghi said she is a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and post-doctoral fellow working at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, was detained by US customs agents, accusing him of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”. The US administration intends to deport him after labeling him as a threat to U.S. foreign policy due to his and his wife’s support for Palestinian rights.