In the early days of his second administration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at suppressing criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. In a purported bid to “combat antisemitism” on college campuses, the order gave the Department of Homeland Security the green light to identify and remove any “alien students” it deems to have engaged in discrimination against their Jewish peers. The real meaning of that order became clear in early March, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, and shipped him to a detention center in Louisiana. After Khalil was taken into custody, Trump warned that his was just “the first arrest of many to come.”
ICE has since pursued students at colleges and universities nationwide and has taken several of them into custody. In every case, the agency seems to be leaning on a provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides for the deportation of any immigrant who holds “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” None of the students have been deported so far, nor has the government named any actual charges against them. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, the administration has stripped more than 300 students of their documentation. “We do it every day,” he said at a press conference, per Axios. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
Here’s what we know so far about the students ICE has targeted.
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A Minnesota State University Mankato Student
What happened to this student? Few details have emerged about this student’s case. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Edward Inch, president of the Minnesota State University Mankato, told the campus community in a Monday letter that a member of the student body had been arrested. “The university has received no information from ICE, and they have not requested any information from us,” Inch reportedly wrote. “I have contacted our elected officials to share my concerns and ask for their help in stopping this activity within our community of learners. Our international students play an important role in our campus and community. They are a valued part of our campus culture.”
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Dogukan Gunaydin
What happened to Dogukan Gunaydin? A graduate student at the University of Minnesota, Gunaydin is a Turkish citizen who was arrested on March 27. According to the New York Times, immigration officers approached Gunaydin outside his home as he was leaving for class. In a lawsuit, Gunaydin says he “feared he was being kidnapped” when he was taken to the local ICE office in Saint Paul. Although he alleges ICE agents told him his visa had been “retroactively revoked,” the Times reports that it took several hours for that status change to show up in online databases. He received an April 8 court date but no real explanation for the decision, and was taken to a jail outside Minneapolis.
Why is ICE targeting him? Unlike the other students on this list, the State Department said in a statement to the Times that “this is not related to student protests.” Instead, the department indicated that Gunaydin had broken the law. The culprit appears to have been a 2023 DUI, which — thanks to a 2015 rule — can make a visa holder vulnerable to deportation. But actually moving to expel someone from the country, seemingly out of the blue and without giving them any opportunity to plead their case, is highly unusual.
How has he responded? As mentioned, Gunaydin is suing Trump, Rubio, and others within the DHS for having allegedly violated his right to due process by taking him into custody when he had a valid visa. Gunaydin says he was not given any reason for the government’s decision to rescind his visa when he was arrested.
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Alireza Doroudi
What happened to Alireza Doroudi? On March 26, ICE officers detained the University of Alabama doctoral student, who is originally from Iran. The university did not identify Doroudi in a statement about a student who had been arrested off-campus, but the New York Times confirmed his identity via ICE records. He’s currently being held in Louisiana’s Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility, per NBC News.
Why is the Trump administration targeting him? The administration has not provided any justification for detaining Doroudi, but a DHS official told NBC News that he “posed significant national-security concerns.” According to the Associated Press, Doroudi’s student visa was rescinded in 2023 — for reasons unknown to his attorney, David Rozas — but he had apparently been granted permission to remain in the country while he finished his studies. Rozas said Doroudi had applied for an EB-2 visa, or an employment-based green card for immigrants who have either an advanced degree or demonstrate “exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business.”
How has he responded? Rozas says he and his client are “confused” as to why Doroudi wound up on the DHS’s radar. “We have not been made aware of any allegations of misconduct against my client,” he told NBC. “We do not believe he is suspected to have committed any crimes nor participated in any political activities whatsoever.”
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Rumeysa Ozturk
What happened to Rumeysa Ozturk? A Ph.D. student at Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts, Ozturk comes from Turkey and is in the U.S. on an F-1 student visa. The DHS took her into custody on the evening of March 25, when six of its officers circled her on the sidewalk just after she left home. In security footage from her neighborhood, the officers — none of them in uniform — could reportedly be heard informing her that they’re “the police” as they grabbed her arms, confiscated her phone, and handcuffed her. The agents then packed her into a van and drove her away.
Why is the Trump administration targeting her? Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Last March, Ozturk and three other students co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily in which they rejected the school’s “wholly inadequate and dismissive response” to student movements in support of Palestine and its failure to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.” Friends of Ozturk’s told the Associated Press that beyond contributing to the op-ed, she hadn’t really been involved in campus protests. However, the article put her on the radar of the Canary Mission, which publishes information on people it believes “promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses.” According to Al Jazeera, Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said her client’s decision to “exercise her free-speech rights appears to have played a role in her detention.” Asked directly about Ozturk’s case during the press conference, Rubio’s only justification for her attempted deportation was that she had allegedly been “creating a ruckus.”
How has she responded? In the immediate aftermath of the arrest, Khanbabai said that “no charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of” and that her client’s whereabouts were unknown. After Khanbabai filed a petition challenging Ozturk’s arrest, a district judge ordered the federal government to furnish a reason for her detention by Friday. While the judge had ruled that Ozturk “shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” DHS confirmed that it transferred her to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.
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Yunseo Chung
What happened to Yunseo Chung? A permanent resident, Chung is originally from South Korea but has lived in the U.S. since she was 7 years old. Now 21, she is a student at Columbia University. On March 5, Chung was arrested during a sit-in at Barnard College, protesting the university’s expulsion of student activists. The AP reports that a few days later, ICE agents showed up at Chung’s parents’ apartment looking for her. She then received a text from someone claiming to be “Audrey with the police,” the New York Times reports, and learned that DHS was planning to rescind her green card. She has been fighting deportation in the courts ever since and has managed to evade the ICE agents who’ve appeared on campus and in her dorm.
Why is the Trump administration targeting her? Per the AP, DHS claims Chung “engaged in concerning conduct.” It also asserted that ICE’s pursuit of the student falls in line with its plan to “investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas.”
What has she said in response? Chung filed a lawsuit arguing that the Trump administration’s dragnet operation is “an unprecedented and unjustifiable assault on First Amendment and other rights.” She argues that she did not play a particularly prominent role in Columbia’s student protests, but she did once put up posters accusing university trustees of “complicity in genocide.” She also received a citation at the sit-in and says Columbia subsequently suspended her. In a statement to the Times, one of Chung’s attorneys, Naz Ahmad, said that she was being punished for having “raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline.” Ahmad added: “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.” On March 25, a federal judge ruled that Chung could not be detained until the government laid out clear evidence demonstrating that the college junior was colluding with terrorists or otherwise threatening public safety.
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Momodou Taal
What happened to Momodou Taal? A dual citizen of the Gambia and the United Kingdom, Taal is a graduate student at Cornell University. He helped file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its targeting of activists. His visa was revoked on March 14, and his attorney subsequently received an email in the early hours of March 21 that requested that Taal appear in person to “surrender to ICE custody.” Taal’s attorney had already asked a judge to preemptively block any efforts by the government to detain or deport him as law enforcement had allegedly showed up outside Taal’s house. His visa has since been revoked, but at time of writing Taal remains in the country.
Why is the Trump administration targeting him? In its court filings, the Justice Department said the government “relied upon the underlying information and assessment provided by ICE that Taal had been involved with disruptive protests and had engaged in an escalating pattern of behavior, disregarding university policies, and creating a hostile environment for Jewish students.” Taal was a prominent figure in Cornell’s pro-Palestine protests last spring and was suspended for refusing to leave an encampment after the university ordered students to clear out. He was suspended a second time this past fall for taking part in “unreasonably loud” chants in another protest. Facing pressure from the student body, the school ultimately opted not to revoke his student visa.
What has he said in response? Taal has continued to speak out against the government’s tactics online and in interviews. “It got to a point where international students are becoming sitting ducks,” Taal recently told the Cut. “We shouldn’t be penalized and punished with the threat of deportation because of expressing our views.” But he left the U.S. for the U.K. on March 31 of his own volition, writing on X that he did so “free and with [his] head held high.” “Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” he explained. “I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted. Weighing up these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms.”
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Badar Khan Suri
What happened to Badar Khan Suri? A postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University on a J-1 student visa, Suri — originally from India — was arrested outside his Virginia home on March 17. Masked DHS agents approached him, telling him his visa had been revoked, and took him into custody and proceeded to shuttle him between detention centers, according to NPR. He is currently being held in Texas’s Prairieland Detention Facility.
Why is the Trump administration targeting him? A DHS spokesperson said Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” noting that he had “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist.” McLaughlin is referring to Suri’s father-in-law, formerly an adviser to the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Suri’s attorney, Hassan Ahmad, told the Times his client was being targeted “seemingly based on who his father-in-law was”; in a court filing, he noted that Suri’s wife’s “identity as a Palestinian and her constitutionally protected speech” appeared to be at issue as well.
How has Suri responded? Suri remains in ICE custody, but those in his orbit have spoken out in support of the scholar. His father-in-law, who has himself criticized the October 7 attacks, has insisted that Suri never engaged in “political activism.” His wife has filed an appeal to overturn his detention, saying it “has completely upended our lives.” According to the BBC, she went on to say that the couple’s three “children are in desperate need of their father and miss him dearly” and that she “desperately needs his support to take care of them.” Georgetown has said it has no reason to believe Suri was “engaging in any illegal activity” and that it hasn’t been given any reason for his arrest.
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Ranjani Srinivasan
What happened to Ranjani Srinivasan? A Fulbright scholar working on a postdoctoral degree at Columbia University, Srinivasan is originally from India. The Times reports that on March 5, she received notice from the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, stating that “information had come to light” that invalidated her F-1 student visa. When ICE agents knocked on her door a few days later, her roommate refused to open the door. By the time they returned the following evening, Srinivasan had already relocated. She then got an email from Columbia informing her that because her visa had been rescinded, she was no longer enrolled and should vacate student housing immediately. Rather than surrendering herself to ICE as the school recommended, Srinivasan booked it to La Guardia airport and got on a flight to Canada. She was already gone when agents came back with a warrant, a departure Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly characterized as a “self-deportation.”
Why is the government targeting Srinivasan? Noem called Srinivasan a “terrorist sympathizer” while the DHS has claimed she was “involved in activities supporting Hamas.” In reality, she told the Times she got caught up in the NYPD’s dispersal of the Hamilton Hall occupation last year. Srinivasan told the paper she was walking through the crowd on her way home when police detained her, awarding her summonses for allegedly obstructing traffic and refusing to disperse. Her case was later dismissed, but the DHS told the Times that because she did not disclose the citations during visa renewal they had grounds to void the document. While Srinivasan signed open letters advocating for Palestinian rights and had been critical of Israel’s actions on social media, she told the Times she felt “surprised” to discover that she could be a “person of interest” to the government.
How has Srinivasan responded? In a statement shared by the Student Workers of Columbia, Srinivasan clarified that she was “forced to flee the U.S. due to ICE threats and Columbia’s complicity” after “ICE illegally terminated” her visa and the university “arbitrarily de-enrolled” her. She has expressed concern that if the government can come after her, it can come after anyone. “If supporting the idea of human rights or ending a genocide is equated with supporting Hamas,” she told Al Jazeera, “then anyone in proximity to me — without me having done anything — can just be picked up and made an example of.”
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Mahmoud Khalil
What happened to Mahmoud Khalil? A green-card holder married to a U.S. citizen, Khalil was a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs when immigration authorities showed up to arrest him on March 8. Khalil and his wife — eight months pregnant at the time — were arriving back to their university-owned apartment building when ICE agents approached them in the lobby and placed Khalil in handcuffs and walked him out the door. His wife said the DHS subsequently told her Khalil’s green card was being revoked. Khalil was quietly transferred from a New Jersey ICE facility to a detention center in Louisiana, and a district judge has since ordered his relocation back to New Jersey. The same judge has also ruled that Khalil cannot be removed from the country “unless and until the court orders otherwise.”
Why is the Trump administration targeting him? To justify Khalil’s detention, the Trump administration reportedly leaned on a provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides for the deportation of any immigrant who holds “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” Initially, DHS said Khalil — a prominent Palestinian activist on Columbia’s campus — “led activities aligned to Hamas,” while Rubio designated him a “Hamas supporter.” Khalil was a spokesperson for the student group pushing Columbia to divest from Israel last year, though he claims not to have participated in the student encampments. He attended the Barnard sit-in days before his arrest. His visibility made him the target of a recently convened disciplinary body at Columbia, which has been investigating students openly critical of Israel. More than a week after arresting Khalil, the government accused him of deliberately neglecting to mention in his green-card application that he worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and the Syrian office of Britain’s Beirut embassy.
How has Khalil responded? Speaking to the Guardian, Khalil referred to himself as a “political prisoner” who was being persecuted for exercising his “right to free speech” and advocating “for a free Palestine.” He claims law enforcement declined to produce a warrant during his arrest, which he sees as an extension of decades-long “anti-Palestinian racism.” Still, he said, “It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”
This is a developing news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.