Momodou Taal, a student facing a possible deportation of pro-Palestinian activities at Dr. Gambia Cornell, said he never imagined being caught up in the US protest when he arrived on campus in 2022.
He was content to study, teach and work primarily based on his thesis. This saw Guinea's sovereignty and political economy.
Still, politics ran with his family – he is the great grandson of Ir Doda Kairaba Javara, the first president of the Gambia. He has been interested in Palestinian causes since he was a teenager.
He studied Arabic and Sharia law in Cairo. And when the war broke out in Gaza, Tar, 31, found himself increasingly drawn to protests on Cornell's campus, he said in a phone interview this week.
On the day of the Hamas attack in October 2023, Taal posted “Glory to Resistance” online. Cornell suspended him twice due to his subsequent activities.
He was one of the group's leaders who refused to break up for two weeks when dozens of tents rose to campus lawns as part of an effort to sell conflict-supporting companies' holdings to schools. He was then stopped for taking part in an unruly protest.
Now he is one of at least nine international students the Trump administration is trying to remove from the country on a promise to quell what it calls anti-Semitism.
However, unlike other students greeted by immigration agents and held at Louisiana detention facilities, Tar has not yet been detained. Before he is taken into custody, he filed a preemptive lawsuit, and he fights to stop him from being detained in court. During this week's interview, he did not reveal his location.
Fearing that he might be taken into custody, Taal did not appear at the hearing at his trial Tuesday. However, he also said that if the court ordered it, he would voluntarily surrender.
“This process is urgent above me and affects every aspect of my life. I already feel like a prisoner, but all I did is exercise my rights,” Tar wrote in court papers.
The court on Thursday denying a request to delay the government's case against Tar appeared to increase the possibility of his detention or deportation, but another hearing in the case is scheduled for next week.
In an executive order signed on January 29, President Trump said it would be the US policy to use “removing all available and appropriate legal tools,” including “deleting” aliens engaged in “illegal anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”
Trump wrote in a social media post on March 10th.
Trump's comments followed the first detention of such a student on March 8, when ice agents filmed Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbian graduate student. Others include Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the US from Korea when she was seven years old.
A doctoral student at Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University was also detained by ICE officers. She was co-author of an essay for Tufts' Student Newspaper last year, criticising the university administration's response to the war in Gaza.
Trump administration officials have in some cases argued that “visas are privileges, not rights.”
Civil libertarians have called deportation efforts one of the biggest attacks on free speech for decades.
Unlike Halil, a permanent resident of the United States, Tar, who holds joint British and Gambia citizenship, is on his student visa. Tar's lawyers said efforts to deport him were a violation of his initial right to amendment.
Tar said he grew up in the UK where his parents moved, and spoke to him at the age of 15 before the British Parliament.
Around that time, someone gave him an “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” “I said he was inspired by the fact that he is Muslim and black,” Tar said.
He came to Cornell in 2022 to study for his Ph.D. In Africana Studies.
After the outbreak of war in Gaza, he joined the Cornell Union for Mutual Liberation, a newly formed campus organization. In the fall of 2023, the group held demonstrations in major buildings, hosting “Left wing potlucks” and held a mock trial that attacked Martha Pollack, then President of Cornell.
Tar, who is active in the campus newspaper Cornell Daily Sun, has taken over the organization's “Intercampus Liaison” title and has become a visible presence at the rally.
In February 2024, at a demonstration outside Cornell's Day Hall, he led the chant after Cornell's Student Conference rejected a resolution to end the university's partnership with companies that provided arms to Israel.
“We are in solidarity with Palestinian armed resistance from the river to the sea,” Tar told the campus crowd after the vote.
Some on the campus viewed such statements as threatening. The phrase “from the river to the sea” is interpreted by some Jews as a call for a genocide to eliminate the state of Israel.
Tar said he views it as a call for the liberation of Palestine.
“I know there are people who don't like what I said,” Tar said. However, he added, “I was not violent. I have never been convicted of a crime. I have never been arrested.”
When asked about the October 7 social media post, he said he did not support any particular Palestinian groups. “What I support is the Palestinian right to resist colonialism, as guaranteed by international law and the principle of self-determination,” he added.
According to court documents, a prozionist organization called Better was tracking Tar's activities. The group placed him on a list of students circulating among members of the Congress, according to Tar's lawsuit.
In a recent post on X, Betar praised the federal government's efforts to deport Taal.
Eliza Salamon, a 2024 Cornell graduate and Jewish member who was involved in Cornell's protests, said that anti-Semitism accusations against Mr. Tar were unfounded.
“I've always seen Momota treat everyone with the utmost respect and I think it's really awful that these false accusations of anti-Semitism are weaponized,” she said.
By April 2024, Tar's activities had pushed Cornell's administration to the limit. He served as the official representative of the 17-tent camp occupied by 50 students, built in Cornell's Art Quad.
In a letter on April 26, Cornell officials notified Tar that he had been temporarily suspended, ignoring a request to remove the camp, along with several other violations, including loud and destructive behaviour.
Last September, Tar violated the administration again. A crowd of students entered the Statler Hotel on campus and protested a career fair where exhibitors included arms makers. Cornell once again stopped Mr Tar, ignored police orders and said he took part in a “unfairly loud” chant.
Mr. Tar feared he would lose his visa.
However, as petitions in support of him gathered thousands of signatures, the university allowed him to take his PhD. Program, as long as he continues his studies remotely. He also no longer was able to teach a class entitled “What Is Blackness.” This is an analysis of how the concept of race differs based on geography. He would have been eligible to return to campus at the end of this semester.
Cornell University has not commented on his detention.
“There is nothing in the executive order that will allow someone to be deported to attend the protest,” Eric T. Lee, the lawyer representing Tar, said at a court hearing held Tuesday in Syracuse, New York. “What we're asking for from this court is to overthrow these orders. They're clearly unconstitutional.”
Lee said the lawsuit is a test case on the question of whether the government can jail people for their speeches.
Tar said he hopes he will choose to stay in the country when he completes his paper. Cornell held an emergency rally on March 20th as a support show.
Cole Louisson Reports of contributions.
