The second person who participated in the pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University was arrested by US immigration agents after overstaying student visas, federal officials said Friday that it was the latest turn of the crisis involving Ivy League facilities.
The person identified by the authorities as Lequa Cordia is Palestinian and is from the West Bank. She was arrested Thursday in Newark, officials said. Her student visa was fired in January 2022, and she was arrested by the New York City Police in April last year for her role in a campus demonstration, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The agency also released a video showing a Colombian student identified as Ranjani Srinivasan on Friday being prepared to enter Canada after the student visa was revoked.
An announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem reflects the escalation of the Trump administration's focus on Colombia, where protests against the war in Gaza last year sparked national debates on freedom of speech and anti-Semitism, prompting similar demonstrations on campuses of dozens of other people.
The action came in a turbulent week at the university, which has been experiencing a series of escalating controversies since the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil's federal immigration agents last weekend.
On Friday, more than 200 students gathered outside Columbia's main campus gate to protest against the handling of Khalil's arrest. Protesters wore kaffiers, waving Palestinian flags and carried banners with slogans such as “Free Mahmoud,” “Ice Ice from Campus,” and “Colombia, which cannot be hidden.”
The protest unfolded within 24 hours of Homeland Security agents entering campus with a federal warrant and searching two dorm rooms. No one was detained and nothing was taken away, according to Katrina Armstrong, the interim president of the university.
Noem's social media post on Friday appeared to indicate that Columbia has remained the subject of Trump administration's scrutiny.
Noem posted the video to social media platform X. This appeared to show a woman walking through LaGuardia Airport in a small suitcase. Noem said she identified the woman as Srinivasan and used the US Customs and Border Protection app to notify the government of its intent to self-report. According to her lawyer and roommate, Srinivasan's dorm room was one of the searched rooms.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States,” Noem said in a statement.
Nathan Jaffe, a member of Srinivasan's legal team, confirmed in a statement that federal agents had entered their dorm room on Thursday to detain her and seek information about her whereabouts. Cordia's lawyer could not be identified immediately.
Last week, the crisis was rife at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus. The Trump administration on Thursday called for universities to make extensive changes to student discipline and admission policies before negotiations over $400 million government grants and contract cancellations.
Federal officials wrote that the university had spent a week in formalizing its definition of anti-Semitism, banning the wearing of masks “intended to hide or threaten identity,” and placing research departments in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa at “academic receivers.”
The government said a move is necessary as it explained that Colombia had not protected Jewish students from harassment. Officials from three agencies wrote that Columbia “fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from anti-Semitic violence and harassment.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a speech to the Department of Justice on Friday that the government is investigating whether the incident on campus violates civil rights protection or federal terrorism laws.
“This has been a long delay,” Blanche said.
However, advocates of civil liberty argued that the government's demands not only erode Colombia's freedom of speech and academic freedom, but also have a calm impact on universities around the country. “The conquest of official power over universities is a characteristic of dictatorship,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knights 1st Amendment Institute of Colombia, said in a statement.
Others were particularly concerned about the demand that universities adopt an anti-Semitism definition that could be punished by people critical of Israel.
Tyler Coward is the head of government affairs at the Foundation for Free Speech and Legal Defense Groups for Individual Rights and Expression, and was called “the blueprint of super-charged censorship at American universities and universities.”
“Universities across the country are reading this letter this morning and they may be thinking of a better censorship speech — or they are: “What do they mean?” Coward said in a statement.
A university spokesperson said on Thursday evening that Colombia had “reviewed the letter” from the government agency. “We are always committed to working on our mission, supporting our students and tackling all forms of discrimination and hatred on campus,” she said.
She did not immediately respond to Friday's request for comment.
After a search of the dorm, Armstrong said in a note to students and staff late Thursday that she was “grief” about the development, saying Columbia is making every effort to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff.
In another lawsuit Thursday, Columbia announced broad disciplinary action against students who occupied campus buildings last spring, in the measures Trump administration officials requested in their letters.
The punishments included “multi-year suspension, temporary revocation and expulsion of a degree,” the university said in a statement. It was unclear how many students were punished.
Among the exiled people was Grant Minor, a Jewish graduate student who was part of a student coalition that sought the university to sell from Israel-connected companies, according to the school's Student Workers Union.
“This is a terrible attempt to break the union and crush the movement against Palestinian genocide,” Miner, a doctoral student in the Faculty of English and Comparative Literature, said in a statement.
“We're not threatened in front of either,” he said.
Anvee Bhutani, Louis Feret Sadorni, Hamed Areaziz Sharla Steinman and Katherine Rothman Reports of contributions.
