In a dizzying sequence of events, a Columbia University undergraduate arrested by federal immigration agents in her college apartment Thursday morning was released later in the day after New York City’s mayor intervened directly with President Trump.
It was the clearest sign yet that Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has vocally opposed Mr. Trump on immigration enforcement matters, holds enough sway with the president to bend a highly charged situation through personal relationship and persuasion.
The drama at Columbia began unfolding shortly after 6 a.m. on Thursday, when five plainclothes immigration agents arrived at the university-owned apartment building of the student and demanded to be let inside, said Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia, in a statement released Thursday night.
The officers falsely told the building superintendent that they were from the Police Department and said that they were searching for a missing child. The superintendent let the officers in, Ms. Shipman said.
At the apartment door of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, 29, the officers repeated the same story to gain entry. “Our security cameras captured the agents in the hallway showing pictures of the alleged missing child,” Ms. Shipman said.
Once the agents entered the apartment, it was clear that they had misrepresented themselves. A public security officer arrived and asked for a warrant, which was not produced, Ms. Shipman said. They refused to give the officer time to call his supervisor, and they then took the student, she said, calling the situation “utterly unacceptable.”
At about 10 a.m., Ms. Shipman put out an urgent letter to the campus about the arrest. It sounded the alarm. A wide range of New York elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, publicly criticized the incursion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into a college setting under false pretenses and demanded the student’s release.
“No one should disappear at the hands of the government,” Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said in her statement. “No student should be taken from their dorm through deception. These incidents demand an independent investigation and real accountability. New York will not look the other way.”
As chance would have it, Mr. Mamdani was headed to Washington for a previously scheduled meeting with Mr. Trump to pitch him on a real estate project. There, the mayor spoke up.
“I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning,” Mr. Mamdani said, describing his conversation with Mr. Trump in a social media post.
Just after 3 p.m., the White House called with a reply. “He has just informed me that she will be released imminently,” Mr. Mamdani wrote.
Court documents show that a lawyer for Ms. Aghayeva filed an emergency petition in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, requesting her release from detention. Ms. Aghayeva posted on Instagram at about 3:45 p.m. that she had been released. “I am so grateful for every one of you,” she wrote.
“The university is relieved and thrilled that our student, Ellie, has been released from detainment,” Columbia posted on social media shortly afterward.
Her arrest punctured months of relative calm on Columbia’s campus, and appeared to be the first incursion by immigration police into one of its buildings in nearly a year. Mahmoud Khalil, who had finished his coursework at Columbia and was about to graduate, was detained in the lobby of his university-owned apartment building in March 2025.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security, said it had arrested Ms. Aghayeva because her “student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.”
Disputing Columbia’s account, the department said that its officers had “verbally identified themselves and wore badges around their necks. The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment.”
Calling Ms. Aghayeva an “illegal alien,” the department added that her deportation case remained active. “ICE placed her in removal proceedings and she has been released while she waits for her hearing,” it said.
Friends of Ms. Aghayeva, calling her Ellie, said that she was a senior in the university’s School of General Studies, majoring in neuroscience and political science.
They found out that she had been taken from her West 121st Street apartment when Ms. Aghayeva posted a photo on her Instagram story showing her in the back of a vehicle. The caption read: “Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.” She has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Her friends and others at the university quickly organized an emergency rally, which attracted about 200 people to the Columbia gates on Broadway on Thursday afternoon.
Delfina Roybal, 29, a senior at Columbia, said at the rally that her classmate, Ms. Aghayeva, had done impressive research at the university.
“I know she was finishing up soon, so it’s just absolutely weird to walk around knowing that she’s somewhere in a cell,” Ms. Roybal said.
Ms. Aghayeva appears to have been in the country since at least 2016. She lived in Connecticut and North Carolina before moving to New York City to attend Columbia, according to public information available about her. Columbia’s School of General Studies caters to nontraditional students, who are often older than typical undergraduates.
In 2020, she married Garrett Blackburn, an American citizen who lives in North Carolina, public records show. But the couple separated four years ago and are not in regular contact, he said in a brief interview.
Columbia requires that law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant to access private areas on campus, including housing facilities and classrooms. It appeared that a judicial warrant was not used in this case, according to Columbia.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, said in a social media post that the ICE agents had shown a phony missing-person’s bulletin for a 5-year-old girl, and that they had fake badges.
“They purposefully deceived campus housing/security to gain entry to the student’s apartment,” he said. “The level of civil rights violations that took place is staggering.”
Other cases involving Columbia students detained by ICE did not come to such a quick resolution. Mr. Khalil, who had a green card, was released from detention on bail, but is still fighting deportation. In April 2025, a Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, was detained when he showed up for a citizenship interview in Vermont. An immigration judge last week blocked his deportation.
A Columbia student from India, Ranjani Srinivasan, fled to Canada last March after federal officers showed up at her university apartment building searching for her. Immigration officials also searched university housing for another student, Yunseo Chung, last March.
At the White House meeting, Mr. Mamdani handed a list of four additional students who had been detained in New York to Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, and to Mr. Trump, asking for his help dismissing those cases, Mr. Mamdani’s press secretary said. The names included Mr. Khalil, Ms. Chung, Mr. Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey woman who was arrested at a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia in 2024.
To try to calm the rattled community, Columbia announced that it was taking additional steps to protect students from immigration police. Building staff members can no longer let in law enforcement officers without the presence of the university’s public safety employees and guidance from its legal office, the university announced.
At the protest on Thursday, students and faculty held signs that said, “Abolish ICE” and “Immigrants Are New York.”
In interviews, they said that Columbia should be doing more to protect them. A sign with a picture of Liam Conejo Ramos, a child who was detained by immigration agents in Minneapolis while carrying a Spider-Man backpack, was raised in the air on a stick.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Samantha Latson contributed reporting.
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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