Columbia protester arrested for overstaying student visa as tensions grow on campus

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Federal agents arrested a Palestinian student who had taken part in protests at Columbia University last spring and had overstayed her student visa, officials said Friday.

The student, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was previously arrested for her participation in the protests. Her visa was terminated in January 2022 for lack of attendance, officials said.

Her arrest by immigration officers from the Newark, New Jersey, field office follows the self-deportation on Tuesday of a Columbia doctoral student from India, Ranjani Srinivasan, whom DHS accused of supporting Hamas. The State Department had revoked her visa a week earlier.

"It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. "When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country."

The latest arrest comes as students at Columbia say they are fearful that they and their friends could be unjustly targeted amid a tense climate on campus, hours after federal agents executed search warrants on two university residences.

Todd Blanche, U.S. deputy attorney general, said Friday that the Justice Department is working with DHS as part of an investigation into Columbia's "harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus."

While school officials told students that no arrests were made and no items seized when DHS agents entered two student rooms on Thursday night, foreign students remained on edge.

The Ivy League's campus in upper Manhattan has seen renewed demonstrations in recent days following the arrest Saturday of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and legal permanent resident who was publicly involved in negotiations during last year's school protests.

Many students approached by NBC News declined to comment, but some who agreed to speak asked not to be named for fear of government retaliation.

"This is exactly what I was worried about months ago," said an engineering student from the United Kingdom who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations last spring over the war in Gaza. The student said he was worried about campus raids and other potential intervention by the federal government.

"It's also like, you don't know the scope of the people they're trying to target because thousands of students were involved in this in some capacity. It would have been on camera," the student said, adding, "Logically nothing is going to happen to me, but it's stressful."

Columbia's American students are rallying around their international counterparts as well after the federal agents searched the two student residences.

Another student, who is American, said she was "shocked" when she read the email from Katrina Armstrong, Columbia's interim president, informing students that DHS had served the university with judicial search warrants signed by a federal magistrate judge.

"It is pretty frightening. The school is doing everything in their power to do their best to keep students safe, but I think there's a limit to what they're able to do," the student, a junior, said. "Last night was evidence of that limit."

Sebastian Javadpoor, 22, said he was "overcome with rage" upon the latest search warrants.

Javadpoor, who leads the university's student-led Democratic club, said he and about a dozen other student leaders met with school officials to convey their fears.

"We have students who are so scared about the possibility of retaliation, about the possibility of having ICE reported on them, that they're too afraid to call public safety if something happens to them," he said. "They're too afraid to call NYPD. They're too afraid to even seek support and services from the administration itself."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Khalil as part of an effort to revoke his green card and deport him, his lawyers said. Khalil, 30, an Algerian citizen and pro-Palestinian activist, is married to a U.S. citizen and was arrested at his university-owned residential building.

"The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States," the Department of Homeland Security stated in a document obtained by NBC News.

He is currently being held at a detention facility in Louisiana, where government officials want him to remain. His lawyers argue that he should be returned to New York and that the administration's actions violate the First Amendment.

Khalil's removal from campus came days after the Trump administration announced that it would cancel approximately $400 million in federal grants to the university "due to the school's continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."

The administration says the school must make sweeping policy changes, including a ban on masks "intended to conceal identity or intimidate others," and allowing for "full law enforcement authority, including arrest and removal of agitators." Columbia has said it would work with the administration to ensure funding continues and is "committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty and staff."

A DHS spokesperson has said Khalil's arrest was in coordination with ICE and the State Department "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism" because Khalil "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization."

His arrest was only the latest action to roil the campus after the last school year, when student protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, leading to dozens of arrests for trespassing. While nearly all of the related charges were eventually dropped, the school on Thursday said it has suspended or expelled some of the students who participated and temporarily revoked some diplomas of those who graduated.

On Friday, dozens of police barricades surrounded the university's main entrance. The university gates that once remained open to all New Yorkers were locked shut as students flashed their badges to get to class, shuffling past police officers, news cameras and flocks of campus security.

Some students participated in a walk out Friday afternoon in response to Khalil's arrest and the student sanctions.

University leaders want to unify the faculty — and potentially some students — by focusing discussions on how Columbia can best defend the school's independence in the face of unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration, as it cracks down on certain international students who engaged in pro-Palestinian protests that swept college campuses.

Some faculty members feel that the Trump administration's demand that Columbia changes how the university operates goes too far and involves core prerogatives of the university. They hope to use this moment to spark a discussion of what the university stands for.

"How do we prevent the university from being divided?" an administrator, who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, said about the mood among university faculty and staff. "People are more oriented toward what we need to do to defend the university."

A graduate student from India said she wanted to join student-led protests over Khalil's removal from campus in recent days, but feared doing so also could put her student visa in jeopardy.

"Your free speech is curtailed. As students, you should be having those kind of rights, but you don't," the 29-year-old said. "You know what's going on, you do want to speak out, but as an international student, you're in a tough position, right?"