A 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the United States since she was a child sued President Trump and other high-ranking administration officials on Monday after immigration officials tried to arrest and deport her.
The student, Yunseo Chung, is a legal permanent resident and junior who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school. The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism.
Administration officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, cited the same rationale in explaining the arrest this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the university and permanent resident who is being held in Louisiana.
Unlike Mr. Khalil, Ms. Chung does not appear to have been a prominent figure in the demonstrations that shook the school last year. But she was among a group of students arrested this month by New York police after a demonstration on the Barnard College campus.
Ms. Chung, a high school valedictorian who moved to the United States with her family from South Korea when she was 7, has not been arrested. She remains in the country, but her lawyers would not comment on her whereabouts.
Her lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan shows the extensive, if so far unsuccessful, efforts by U.S. immigration officials to arrest her. Agents historically prefer to pick up immigrants in jail or prisons. Other types of arrests are more difficult, often requiring hours of research, surveillance and other investigative resources.
But federal agents believed that those efforts were merited in the case of Ms. Chung, according to her lawyers at CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials visited several residences on March 13, called for help from federal prosecutors and searched Ms. Chung’s university housing.
The involvement of federal prosecutors was particularly notable. According to Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harboring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to noncitizens present in the United States illegally.
That signaled that the searches were related to a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors into Columbia University. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has said that the school is under investigation “for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”
Operating under the aegis of a federal investigation could signal a new tactic. ICE officers and agents often are unable to arrest their targets because they don’t answer the door, and an administrative warrant does not provide agents access to a home.
At the same time, the attempted arrest appears to be part of a new front in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown — targeting immigrants who are in the country legally.
Ms. Chung, who majors in English and gender studies, has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations since last year. Her lawyers say that she did not speak to reporters, negotiate on behalf of student demonstrators, or in any other way take a leadership position.
She was, however, accused by the university of joining other students in posting fliers that pictured members of the board of trustees with the phrase “wanted for complicity in genocide.”
Press representatives for the secretary of state, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The dizzying sequence of events that appears to have prompted ICE agents to show up at her house began this month.
On March 5, she protested outside a university building where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators were holding a sit-in. Ms. Chung was arrested by police officers, given a desk appearance ticket and released.
Four days later — and the day after Mr. Khalil was arrested — immigration officials appeared at the home of Ms. Chung’s parents.
Around that time, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Chung herself was texted by someone identifying herself as “Audrey with the police.” When a lawyer for Ms. Chung called the number, the woman said that she was an agent with ICE, that the State Department was free to revoke Ms. Chung’s residency status and that there was an administrative warrant for her arrest.
At the same time, Columbia University’s public safety office emailed Ms. Chung to alert her that the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan had been in touch, repeating that ICE officials were seeking Ms. Chung’s arrest.
On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor’s office, told one of Ms. Chung’s attorneys that the secretary of state, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung’s visa. The lawyer, Naz Ahmad, responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Carbone responded that Mr. Rubio had “revoked that” as well.
The conversation echoed an exchange between Mr. Khalil’s lawyers and the immigration agents who arrested him and who did not initially appear to be aware of his residency status.
After his arrest, Mr. Khalil was swiftly transferred, first to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where 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 move against noncitizens whose presence threatens the country’s foreign policy agenda. Homeland security officials have since added other allegations against Mr. Khalil.
Mr. Rubio’s memo targeting Mr. Khalil also included Ms. Chung’s name, according to a person with knowledge of its contents.
In Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, her lawyers accused the government of obtaining warrants “under false pretenses,” suggesting that the search under the harboring statute was merely a pretext for an attempt to detain Ms. Chung and another student whom the suit did not name. A Department of Justice spokesman did not immediately respond on that point.
Ms. Chung’s lawyers asked that a judge bar the government from taking enforcement action against Ms. Chung, or from detaining her, transferring her to another location or removing her from the United States. They also asked the judge to bar the government from targeting any noncitizen for deportation based on constitutionally protected speech and pro-Palestinian advocacy.
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