The Disappeared

A tent on the qud has a sign hung across it that reads in red, "Liberated zone." Protestors in the background wear yarmulkes and kuffiyehs and wave Palestinian flags.

Wm3214, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.

This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.

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ICE, at the behest of the Trump administration, has been abducting people on and around college campuses and disappearing them. This is a war on civil liberties, due process, and free speech, and it is a fascistic, Nazi-inspired tactic to spread fear among the resistance.

Make no mistake: if ICE and the current administration are willing to commit these violations in one place, they are willing to do so everywhere. None of us are safe from this simply because we’re not students, because we don’t hold certain views, or even because we’re citizens.

Today we bring you the stories of some of the students and faculty ICE has abducted. Hundreds of others are being harassed by email, with ICE attempting to bully them into self-deporting. We Are Higher Ed is tracking these ICE abductions and has more information and more links.
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‘Columbia let me down’: How Indian scholar expelled by Trump fled the US

On Thursday, March 6th, Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD Candidate at Columbia University, received an email telling her that her visa had been revoked. She thought it was spam. At the end of this process, she was accused by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of being a “terrorist sympathizer.” Srinivasan is now in Canada, knowing that the Trump administration could arrest her at any moment for the ‘crime’ of protected political speech.
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Pro-Palestinian Cornell Student Momodou Taal Ordered to Surrender to ICE, Faces Possible Deportation

Momodou Taal was studying for his PhD in Africana Studies at Cornell and participated alongside his peers in student demonstrations calling upon Cornell University to divest from Israel. Taal, a dual citizen of Gambia and the United Kingdom, first faced the threat of deportation after being suspended twice last year by Cornell for his participation in these peaceful protests, but was re-enrolled and his student visa extended after massive protests took place on his behalf against Cornell. Now, ICE has followed up on the target Cornell placed on Taal’s back.

Taal’s commitment to justice and advocacy has been unwavering; a couple of weeks ago, Taal joined with two of his fellow students to file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s so-called “antisemitism” executive order targeting student protestors for deportation, arguing that the order unconstitutionally silences students’ right to free speech and protest. Even so, Taal left the U.S. on his own terms because he “lost faith” that he could be safe here. Taal’s case offers further evidence that the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda is inextricable from its parallel mission to silence and exact vengeance upon anyone who voices dissent or challenges the actions of the US government.
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Indiana University terminated professors the same day the FBI searched their homes

Responding to federal pressure about Gaza solidarity protests on campus as well as current congressional concerns casting the presence of Chinese faculty, staff and students on US campuses as a security risk, Indiana University terminated the employment of tenured professor Xiaofeng Wang and libraries analyst Lianli Ma without due process last week. Subsequently, the FBI searched homes belonging to the couple and the university scrubbed their presence from its web page. There is no evidence that either has been charged with a crime, but their whereabouts remain unknown.

This kind of clandestine disappearance and lack of access to due process is one of the most feared aspects of totalitarian societies.

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Deportation halted for Tufts student whose visa Rubio says was revoked due to activism

Captured on video last week, Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested and taken away by plainclothes officers, later to be identified as ICE officers, as she was headed to meet friends for a Ramadan break fast.

The Trump administration revoked Ozturk’s student visa and sent her to an ICE detention center in Louisiana for co-authoring an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, demanding that the administration acknowledge the Palestinian genocide and disclose and divest from companies that have investments in Israel.

Last week, Tufts students turned out in large numbers to protest the detention of their classmate as Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a chilling press conference, where he gloated about Ozturk’s detention.

Ozturk’s deportation has been halted by a federal judge in Boston, because of the way she was detained.
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Two students from Minnesota universities abducted by ICE, no explanations given

In the past week, two different students have been abducted by ICE from Minnesota universities. In both cases, it was not immediately apparent who the students were or where they had been taken, and ICE gave no immediate justification for taking them.

A student from the University of Minnesota, a Turkish national living in St Paul, “feared he was being kidnapped” when ICE took him the instant he stepped out of his home to go to class. He was told his student visa was being “retroactively revoked.” He is now suing DHS and the Trump administration to challenge his arrest.

On Monday, a student from Minnesota State University, located in the small city of Mankato, was taken by ICE. Despite repeated requests, university officials said ICE had failed to provide them with any information about the student, the student’s whereabouts, or the pretext for arrest. ICE is using the tactics of terrorists, plain and simple.
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EthanRumeysa Ozturk
7 Actions you can take Right Now:

  1. Mark your space a sanctuary. Support Never Again Action today with a donation of $18 or more and receive at least 1 free poster to assert and remind you and all your guests that we open the door for Elijah–not ICE.

  1. Immigration organizer Sithy Bin in California is being ordered to leave the country. Tell Governor Newsome to stand up to the deportation agenda and keep Sithy Home.

  2. Intent on doubling down on the targeting of communities, the Trump administration is trying to force people to register their immigration status or be further criminalized. People with citizenship need to let the administration know, we will be clear and public in our opposition against the collecting of our immigrant neighbor's information. Submit your public comment against the registry here.

  3. Jeanette Vizguerra, community leader and mother, was arrested by ICE in Colorado. Jeanette has been fighting her deportation case since 2009 and is a pillar to her community and family. She has organized and supported immigrant and human rights for years, she needs our support now.

  1. College Students/Faculty/Staff: Sign the ICE Noncompliance Pledge. When Trump abuses “Jewish safety” to justify deportations, we must spread the word to not comply.

  2. Respond to reports of suspected raids in your area in real time by reading and sharing the information in this 1-page guide. For those of us who are allies especially, learn how to watch for ICE and protect your neighbors.

  3. Updated for 2025: Never Again Action is equipping members to organize themselves into neighborhood groups (or “pods”) to be trained and respond to deportation threats on a hyperlocal level. Learn more and build or join a pod: bit.ly/BuildAPod2025

  4. Support Never Again Action’s organizing by making a donation today. You can make a tax deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor at this link, or you can donate directly to our 501(c)(4) organization at this link.

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