‘This shouldn’t occur in a democracy’: Trump tries to arrest educational suing administration over antisemitism government order

Immigration officials may arrest and begin the deportation process against a Cornell PhD student who is in the middle of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive orders cracking down on pro-Palestinian protesters.

His attorneys say the situation is an alarming violation of constitutional rights and normal court process, where a critic of the administration may be taken out of the country before his day in court.

Momodou Taal, a citizen of the UK and The Gambia, is one of three academics who sued the Trump administration earlier this month, alleging a pair of executive orders have the effect of unconstitutionally threatening to deport immigrants who protest the administration and its allies like Israel.

Last week, with pending hearings scheduled in the constitutional case, Taal got an email from a Justice Department lawyer citing the lawsuit, directing him to “surrender” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to court documents.

A federal court on Thursday denied an emergency request from the Cornell activist to temporarily pause any arrest attempts, as well as the enforcement of the executive orders, while the case plays out. A judge argued that Taal’s visa was revoked before he filed the suit, and that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to pause the process at this point, noting he could challenge his removal in an immigration or appeals court.

The decision left the academic in limbo.

“The past week has been perhaps the most intense and stressful of my life,” Taal wrote in an affidavit submitted Thursday. “I live in fear that ICE agents are going to try to arrest me.”

The PhD added that he fears losing easy access to his legal counsel, and has been alarmed reading about the conditions faced by other non-citizen academics in detention over their role in the campus protests, like Columbia grad Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in New York and quickly spirited to a detention center in Louisiana.

Taal’s lawyers previously told The Independent the case is a grave warning for eroding protest and legal rights in the U.S.

“That is something which should cause deep concern and outrage among everybody who wants to defend the most democratic principles in the Bill of Rights and to anyone who wants to prevent Donald Trump from accomplishing his goal of establishing a dictatorship in this country,” said attorney Eric Lee.

“This type of thing should not happen in a democracy,” he added.

On Thursday, they submitted a new legal complaint and again asked for an emergency order stopping attempts to arrest Taal or move him to another jurisdiction. The Trump officials named in the suit have been ordered to respond by Monday.

Taal’s suit, filed with two other Cornell academics, challenges a pair of Trump executive orders signed in January.

The White House directives call for agencies to investigate and potentially remove non-citizens in the U.S. who “bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” and “advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

The president and his allies frequently describe all pro-Palestinian protests that took place across 2023 and 2024 as synonymous with aiding Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group. Trump vowed in a January statement to deport what he called “all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests.”

The federal complaint alleges that the executive orders violate First Amendment Protections for free speech and Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process based on a “vague, subjective, and overbroad standards that grant unfettered discretion to government officials.”

It points to comments from Trump officials like Justice Department civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell, who said in February the administration would put an end to “these disorderly demonstrations, supporting Hamas and trying to intimidate Jews” and “put these people in jail — not for 24 hours, but for years.”

As Taal’s complaint worked its way through the courts, law enforcement agents and vehicles appeared outside Taal’s home last week, in what his attorneys believe was a prelude to arrest.

“Their response to the filing of the suit was to go to his house and threaten to arrest him,” Lee said.

The Independent has contacted the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Taal has been at the center of controversy before. He was suspended last year over his involvement in protests and told he could lose his visa, though he later reached an agreement with the university to continue attending classes remotely this spring.

He has been criticized for posts after the Hamas attack on Israel arguing that “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary,” but has maintained he condemns the killing of all civilians.

Betar US, a right-wing, Zionist organization considered an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League, claimed in an email to The Independent it submitted Taal’s name to federal officials alongside other campus activists who’ve been detained.

The Cornell student said in a statement last week he is undeterred in his activism.

“Am I worried at times? Of course,” he wrote on X. “Am I stressed beyond anything I’ve experienced before? Most definitely. But I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent. There is no point living in a world where 100s of children are slaughtered daily.”

Whatever happens in court, Taal’s lawyers are concerned the that the “lawless” administration might not follow a court order, even if the judge does stop the apparent deportation process, or might move along the deportation process faster than courts can scrutinize it.

The administration recently defied a court’s order to halt or turn around a series of deportation flights bound for El Salvador in the midst of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s invoking of the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Administration lawyers have suggested that because the initial order was verbal, and because the planes eventually entered international airspace, they were not at fault.

Students caught up in the enforcement effort have been quickly moved away from their families and legal advocates in their home jurisdictions.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who was arrested by masked agents on Tuesday, was moved to a detention center in Louisiana, the same day a federal judge ordered she not be moved for 48 hours amid an ongoing legal challenge. Based on existing public evidence, Ozturk’s main involvement in protest activity was co-writing an op-ed critical of the Israeli war effort.

The Trump administration has attempted to or succeeded in getting multiple academics it accuses of supporting terrorism and fostering antisemitism out of the country, though many maintain they were either mistakenly targeted or were singled out for constitutionally protected protest activism that supported the Palestinian cause.

Earlier this month, immigration agents arrested protest leader and recent Columbia University grad Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian U.S. green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, accusing him of “antisemitic activities” and supporting Hamas, which he has denied.

Last Wednesday, a federal judge denied a Trump administration attempt to dismiss Khalil’s case challenging his detention on First and Fifth Amendment grounds.

Khalil argued in a recent op-ed from a Louisiana detention center that he’s being punished for speaking out about the Israeli war effort in Gaza, which international observers have alleged is a genocide.

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” he wrote in The Guardian.

This month, Department of Homeland Security agents also arrested Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University post-doctoral fellow from India married to a U.S. citizen, on similar grounds outside his Virginia home.

The Department of Homeland Security alleges Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” a seeming reference to Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen who worked in the Gazan foreign ministry and whose father once advised the now-dead leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, according to The Washington Post.

Suri’s apparent X feed shows the scholar, who studies conflict and religious tolerance, criticizing civilian deaths and what he saw as violations of international law in the Israel-Hamas war.

Suri’s attorneys, as well as Virginia congressman Don Beyer, have criticized the arrest as unfounded.

“The ‘justification’ given for these violations of Mr. Suri’s right to due process is another violation of the Constitution: a blatant attack on the First Amendment,” Beyer said in a statement to The Independent. “Mr. Suri and his family are unfortunately the latest victim of President Trump’s assault on the freedom of speech.”

In the cases of both Khalil and Suri, the men are not accused of committing a crime but rather have been determined by the State Department to be threats to U.S. foreign policy and subject to removal.

Others say they’ve been mistakenly swept up in the campus crackdown.

Columbia urban planning student Ranjani Srinivasan of India fled the U.S. this month after her visa was revoked, for what federal officials said were activities supporting Hamas, and failing to disclose two past court summonses.

She was briefly arrested at a tense pro-Palestine protest at Columbia in 2024 where students occupied a campus building and hundreds were detained by police. She told CBS News she wasn’t involved with the protest and was detained as she walked home from a faculty picnic. Her case was later dismissed.

“I just found it absurd. I’m not a terrorist sympathizer,” she said. “I came to the U.S. because I really like the academic culture you have. A lot of academic freedom, something you don’t really find anywhere else in the world. Currently I do think that there is a crazy climate of fear in universities.”

Source: independent.co.uk