Federal agents protested at Columbia University last spring and arrested a Palestinian student who overstayed student visas, officials said Friday.
The student identified by the Ministry of Homeland Security as Rekhaa Kodia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, has been arrested previously for participating in the protest. Her visa ended in January 2022 due to lack of attendance, officials said.
Her arrest field office by immigrants from Newark, New Jersey follows a self-report on Tuesday by Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral student in Columbia in India. The State Department revoked its visa a week ago.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States,” DHS Director Christa Noem said in a statement. “When we defend violence and terrorism that your privilege should be revoked and you should not be in this country.”
The latest arrests say Columbia students are afraid they will be unfairly targeted in the tensioned climate on campus hours after federal agents executed a search warrant at two university homes.
U.S. Associate Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday that the Justice Department is working with DHS as part of an investigation into “hugging and covering up illegal foreigners on campus” in Columbia.
School officials told students that DHS agents were not arrested and items were not seized when they entered two student rooms on Thursday night, but the foreign student stayed.
The Ivy League campus in Upper Manhattan has seen a recent demonstration after Saturday arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbian graduate student and legal permanent resident who was publicly involved in negotiations during school protests last year.
Many students approached NBC News declined to comment, but those who agreed to speak were asked not to be named for fear of government retaliation.
“This is exactly what I was worried about a few months ago,” said a British engineering student who attended a pro-Palestinian demonstration during the war in Gaza last spring. The student said he was worried about the campus attacks and other potential federal interventions.
“It’s also like thousands of students were involved in this in some capacity and don’t know the scope of the people they were trying to target. It would have been on camera,” the student said.
American students in Columbia are gathering international counterparts after federal agents search for two student housing.
Another American student said she was “shocked” when she read an email from Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, and notified the students that DHS had served the university with a judicial search warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge.
“That’s pretty scary. The school does everything to do to keep students safe, but I think there are limits to what they can do,” the junior student said. “Last night was evidence of that restriction.”
Sebastian Javadpur, 22, said he had “overcome his anger” in the latest search warrant.
Javadpoor, who leads the university’s student-led democratic club, said he and about 12 other student leaders will meet with school staff to share their fears.
“We have students who are very scared of the possibility of retaliation, the possibility that ice will be reported to them. “They are too afraid to call the NYPD. They are too afraid to even seek support or services from the administration itself.”
Immigration and customs mandatory agents arrested Halil as part of their efforts to cancel his green card and expel him, his lawyer said. Khalil, 30, an Algerian civic and pro-Palestinian activist, married to a US citizen and was arrested in a residential building owned by his university.
“The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activity in the United States will have serious foreign policy implications on the United States,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a document obtained by NBC News.
He is currently in custody at a Louisiana detention facility, and government officials hope he will stay. His lawyers argue that he should be returned to New York and that the administration’s actions violate the First Amendment.
The removal of Halil from campus comes days after the Trump administration announced it would cancel approximately $400 million in federal grants to universities “as schools continued in the face of permanent harassment of Jewish students.”
The administration says schools must make drastic policy changes, including allowing “full law enforcement agencies, including arresting and removing agitators,” including a ban on masks “in order to hide their identity or intimidate others.” Colombia has said it will work with the administration to ensure the funding continues and “committed to combat anti-Semitism and ensuring the safety and welfare of its students, faculty and staff.”
A DHS spokesperson said that Halil’s arrest was lined up in Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, and that “Halil is working with the State Department to “prohibit anti-Semitism” in support of President Trump’s executive order to ban anti-Semitism.
His arrest was just the latest lawsuit to raid campus after last year’s school year, when student protesters occupied Hamilton Hall and led to dozens of arrests for trespassing. Almost all of the related charges were eventually removed, but the school said Thursday suspended or expelled some of the participating students and temporarily revoked diplomas for those who graduated.
Dozens of police barricades surrounded the university’s main entrance on Friday. The university gate, once left open to all New Yorkers, saw students reach class with badges flashing, shuffling past police officers, news cameras and campus security flocks.
Some students took part in a walk Friday afternoon in response to Khalil’s arrest and student sanctions.
University leaders want to unify faculty by focusing debate on how Columbia can protect school independence in the face of unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on certain international students who engaged in pro-Palestinian protests that swept the university’s campuses.
Some faculty members feel that the Trump administration’s demand for Columbia to change the way universities operate is too far and accompanied by the university’s core privileges. They hope to use this moment to discuss what the university represents.
“How can I prevent the university from being split?” The administrator, who asked not to name because they were not allowed to speak publicly, spoke about the mood between university faculty and staff. “People are being directed at what we need to do to protect the university.”
Indian graduate students said they wanted to take part in a student-led protest against the recent removal of Halil from campus, but were also afraid to put their student visas at risk by doing so.
“Your freedom of speech will be reduced. As a student, you should have that right, but you won’t,” said the 29-year-old.
