![\"pols](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/unnamed-20.jpg\" "\\"ICE")
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Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal outside of Columbia University. <\/p>\n
Photo by Dean Moses<\/p>\n
Several elected officials gathered outside of Columbia University<\/a> on Monday afternoon, demanding disclosure of bodycam and security footage from last week\u2019s ICE arrest of student Ellie Aghayeva.<\/a><\/p>\n The pols want interim Columbia University President Claire Shipman to release surveillance footage and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to provide officers bodycam footage of the on-campus arrests involving ICE agents.<\/p>\n Aghayeva, a native of Azerbaijan, was taken into custody by ICE<\/a> agents on Feb. 26; witnesses said the agents falsely identified themselves to gain access to the campus. The student was later released after Mayor Zohran Mamdani directly appealed to President Donald Trump<\/a> during their Oval Office meeting that day.<\/p>\n On March 2, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Micah Lasher, and others stood on West 116th Street and Broadway and charged that they wanted to see the video of exactly what took place during the ICE operation at Columbia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know from the message that acting president of Columbia, Claire Shipmen, sent to the community, that Columbia has security footage of the ICE agents entering the building and making false claims about why they were there,\u201d Lasher said. \u201cIt is in the public interest to know how they lied, what they said, whether they presented false identification, whether they brandished a missing child poster, and all of what happened leading up to the abduction of Ellie, we needed to understand if there is criminal liability on the part of the ICE agents, whether they broke the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Columbia University did not immediately respond for comment. Previously, school officials stated that the agents had pretended to be searching for a missing child in order to enter the school. According to Shipman, \u201carmed\u201d agents stated that they \u201cwere taking our student now and they could do it the easy way or the hard way.\u201d<\/p>\n During the process, NYPD officers were also called to the scene for a report of \u201ctwo suspicious males,\u201d but left when they identified the men as ICE agents.\n<\/p>\n Hoylman-Sigal stated that, in the interest of transparency, he is also demanding the release of the cops\u2019 body-worn cameras.\n<\/p>\n \u201cAnother question that has to be answered: Did Colombia cooperate with ICE? We don\u2019t know the answer to that. We hope the answer is no, but the security footage will prove that. Did the NYPD cooperate with ICE? We trust the answer is no, but show us the body cam and the security footage. The chaos and confusion of the Trump administration has filtered down to this campus because we don\u2019t have clarity as to what happened,\u201d Hoylman-Sigal said.<\/p>\n According to the NYPD, when officers arrived, they verified the federal agent\u2019s status, then immediately left the location and did not interact with Aghayeva.\n<\/p>\n \u201cNYPD officers followed the correct protocol and guidelines when interacting with Federal Officers,\u201d an NYPD spokesperson said.\n<\/p>\n Still, the elected officials say they are demanding the release of both the security footage and the body cameras.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not here to criticize either Colombia or the NYPD for not yet having released the footage, but certainly the release of the footage on an expeditious basis would serve the public interest, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re here to say,\u201d Lasher said. \u201cSo we can understand if there were things that Colombia might have done differently, systems that might have been in place, that could have protected Ellie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal outside of Columbia University. Photo by Dean Moses Several elected officials gathered outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[19817,2035,75,84,83,9,24,63,103,104],"class_list":["post-150226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-columbia-university","tag-ice","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/unnamed-19.jpg\" "\\"ICE")
Assemblymember Micah Lasher. Photo by Dean Moses\n<\/p>\n