Yunseo Chung, a junior at Columbia College, sued U.S. President Donald Trump and different high officers within the Southern District of New York on Monday, difficult “the federal government’s stunning overreach in in search of to deport a university scholar… who’s a lawful everlasting resident of this nation, due to her protected speech.”
The 21-year-old, who moved from South Korea to the USA together with her household at age 7, participated in some scholar protests on Columbia’s campus “associated to Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians,” states the complaint. “Chung has not made public statements to the press or in any other case assumed a high-profile position in these protests. She was, relatively, one of a big group of faculty college students elevating, expressing, and discussing shared considerations.”
Earlier this month, she was arrested by the New York Police Division at a scholar sit-in “to protest what she believed to be the extreme punishments meted out by the Columbia administration to scholar protesters going through campus disciplinary proceedings,” the doc particulars. “Mere days later… the federal authorities started a collection of illegal efforts to arrest, detain, and take away Ms. Chung from the nation due to her protected speech.”
The go well with asserts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “stunning actions in opposition to Ms. Chung kind half of a bigger sample of tried U.S. authorities repression of constitutionally protected protest exercise and different types of speech,” particularly, “college college students who converse out in solidarity with Palestinians and who’re important of the Israeli authorities’s ongoing navy marketing campaign in Gaza or the pro-Israeli insurance policies of the U.S. authorities and different U.S. establishments.”
Professors at different U.S. universities referred to as the Trump administration’s focusing on of Chung ” frightening” and “absolutely chilling to free speech.”
Trump needs to deport a 21-year-old Korean-American Columbia scholar who hasn’t lived in Korea since age 7. Her offense? Protesting in opposition to Israel. She allegedly posted fliers that pictured members of Columbia’s board as “needed for complicity in genocide.”https://t.co/0MhG2oDxyT
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 24, 2025
Along with Trump, Chung is suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, performing ICE Director Todd Lyons, and William Joyce, head of ICE’s area workplace in New York. Her legal professionals are seeking a short lived restraining order “barring the federal government from detaining her primarily based on her protected speech and within the absence of unbiased, reputable grounds.”
Naz Ahmad, certainly one of Chung’s legal professionals and co-director of Creating Legislation Enforcement Accountability & Duty (CLEAR), told The New York Instances that the Trump administration’s “efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism.”
“Like many hundreds of scholars nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice in opposition to what is occurring in Gaza and in assist of fellow college students going through unfair self-discipline,” Ahmad added. “It could possibly’t be the case {that a} straight-A scholar who has lived right here most of her life may be whisked away and doubtlessly deported, all as a result of she dares to talk up.”
The newspaper famous how Chung’s case resembles that of Mahmoud Khalil, a everlasting resident arrested earlier this month after serving to lead protests at Columbia, the place he completed graduate research final 12 months:
On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer within the federal prosecutor’s workplace, advised Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung’s legal professional, that the secretary of state, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung’s visa. Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not within the nation on a visa and was a everlasting resident. In response to the lawsuit, Mr. Carbone responded that Mr. Rubio had “revoked that” as nicely.
The dialog echoed an change between Mr. Khalil’s legal professionals and the immigration brokers who arrested him and who didn’t initially seem to pay attention to his residency standing.
After his arrest, Mr. Khalil was swiftly transferred, first to New Jersey and in the end to Louisiana, the place he has been detained since. The statute that the Trump administration used to justify his detention and Ms. Chung’s potential deportation says that the secretary of state can transfer in opposition to noncitizens whose presence he has cheap grounds to consider threatens the nation’s overseas coverage agenda. Homeland safety officers have since added other allegations against Mr. Khalil.
Chung and Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, aren’t the one critics of Israel’s assault on Gaza focused by the administration. As Widespread Desires reported final week, masked immigration authorities “kidnapped”Badar Khan Suri, an Indian nationwide and Georgetown College postdoctoral fellow on a scholar visa. A U.S. Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) spokesperson mentioned Rubio decided Suri’s “actions and presence” in the USA “rendered him deportable.”
Chung’s grievance factors to the instances of Khalil, Suri, Columbia graduate scholar Ranjani Srinivasan, Leqaa Kordia, and Cornell College doctoral scholar Momodou Taal. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee earlier this month sued the president, Noem, and DHS on behalf of Taal, Cornell doctoral scholar Sriram Parasurama, and professor Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ over “the Trump administration’s unconstitutional marketing campaign in opposition to free speech.”
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