NEW YORK — (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.
Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested, and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.
A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, for overstaying her student visa.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president's “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”
“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. "That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”
Blanche didn't say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.
The Associated Press left messages seeking comment from the university Friday. In a statement following the searches Thursday night, interim university president Katrina Armstrong said the school was “committed to upholding the law.”
Columbia has come under immense pressure from the Trump administration in recent weeks, with the U.S. government canceling $400 million in federal funding for the school, much of it for medical research, as punishment for not cracking down harder on students and faculty who criticized Israel's military action in Gaza.
Trump and other officials have accused the protesters as being “pro-Hamas,” referring to the militant group that controls Gaza and attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Trump administration said it had revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen and doctoral student at Columbia University, for allegedly "advocating for violence and terrorism." Srinivasan opted to "self-deport" Tuesday, five days after her visa was revoked, the department said. Officials didn't immediately say what evidence they had that Srinivasan had advocated violence.
The woman who was arrested in Newark, Leqaa Kordia, was charged with failing to leave the U.S. after her visa expired. Columbia said it had no record of Kordia ever being a student there, or being arrested on the campus. However, there were numerous protests and arrests in the streets outside of the university at the same time.
Kordia had previously received a student visa, but it was terminated in 2022 for “lack of attendance,” the department said. She is being held in an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas, according to a government database.
Columbia University's campus has been in crisis since the arrest Sunday of Mahmoud Khalil, a well-known Palestinian activist who helped lead last spring's protests.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Friday the Trump administration is expecting to revoke more student visas in the coming days.
Lawyers for the Justice Department say in court papers that Kahlil, a lawful U.S. resident with no criminal history, was detained under a law allowing Rubio to remove someone from the country if he has reasonable grounds to believe their presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.
On Thursday, Khalil's lawyers filed new court documents describing how he was rushed from New York to Louisiana last weekend in a manner that left the outspoken Columbia University graduate student feeling like he was being kidnapped.
The experience reminded Khalil of when he left Syria shortly after the forced disappearance of his friends there during a period of arbitrary detention in 2013, the lawyers wrote.
According to the lawsuit, Khalil repeatedly asked to speak to a lawyer after he was snatched by federal agents as he and his wife were returning to Columbia’s residential housing, where they lived, after dinner at a friend’s home.
Confronted by agents for the DHS, Khalil briefly telephoned his lawyer before he was taken to FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan, the lawsuit said.
It was there that Khalil saw an agent approach another agent and say, “the White House is requesting an update,” the lawyers wrote.
At some point early Sunday, Khalil was taken, handcuffed and shackled, to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a privately run facility where he spent the night in a cold waiting room for processing, his request for a blanket denied, the lawsuit said.
When he reached the front of the line for processing, he was told his processing would not occur after all because he was being transported by immigration authorities, it said.
Put in a van, Khalil noticed that one of the agents received a text message instructing that Khalil was not to use his phone, the lawsuit said.
At 2:45 p.m. Sunday, he was put on an American Airlines flight from Kennedy International Airport to Dallas, where he was put on a second flight to Alexandria, Louisiana. He arrived at 1 a.m. Monday and a police car took him to the Louisiana Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, it said.
At the facility, he now worries about his pregnant wife and is “also very concerned about missing the birth of his first child,” the lawsuit said.
In April, Khalil was to begin a job and receive health benefits that the couple was counting on to cover costs related to the birth and care of the child, it added.
“It is very important to Mr. Khalil to be able to continue his protected political speech, advocating and protesting for the rights of Palestinians — both domestically and abroad,” the lawsuit said, noting that Khalil was planning to speak on a panel at the upcoming premiere in Copenhagen, Denmark, of a documentary in which he is featured.
The filing late Thursday in Manhattan federal court was the result of a federal judge’s Wednesday order that they finally be allowed to speak privately with Khalil.
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Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz in New York and Matthew Lee in La Malbaie, Quebec, contributed to this report.
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