A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's efforts to deport a 21-year-old Columbia University undergraduate who took part in student protests against Israel's invasion of Gaza, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
"The administration has been seeking to arrest the student, Yunseo Chung, since earlier this month, according to a lawsuit filed by Ms. Chung’s lawyers," and to return her to South Korea, according to the report. However, "The judge, Naomi Buchwald, said during a hearing on Tuesday that 'nothing in the record' indicated that Ms. Chung posed a danger to the community or a 'foreign-policy risk' or had communicated with terrorist organizations."
Trump had pledged on the campaign trail to deport any foreign-born student protesters rallying on behalf of Palestine under 1950s laws designed to remove terrorist threats from the country, and that were argued unconstitutional by Trump's sister while she was on the federal bench.
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The administration, via the State Department, argued that these students disseminated propaganda on behalf of the terrorist group Hamas, whose attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, marked the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust and triggered the Gaza invasion.
"Ms. Chung, a high school valedictorian who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7, has not been detained by federal agents, and her lawyers have declined to comment on her whereabouts," noted the report.
At the moment, one of the most high-profile such removal cases is that of Mahmoud Khalil, one of the organizers of the Columbia protests who was abruptly arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year, despite being a permanent resident green card holder with a pregnant U.S. citizen wife. Khalil was taken to an infamous detention network in Louisiana known for the abuse of detainees.