message<\/a> on Thursday evening, Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman said five DHS agents entered the off-campus residential building \u201cwithout any kind of warrant\u201d after identifying themselves as police searching for a missing child. She said campus security footage shows the agents displaying photos of a missing child before taking the student into custody.<\/p>\n“Once inside the apartment, it became clear they had misrepresented themselves,” Shipman wrote. “A public safety officer arrived, asked multiple times for a warrant, which was not produced and asked for time to call his boss, which was not given. The agents took our student.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the detention and said Aghayeva’s student visa was terminated in 2016 during the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.<\/p>\n
In a later statement Thursday night, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers verbally identified themselves and wore badges around their necks when they arrived at the apartment. The spokesperson said the building manager and Aghayeva\u2019s roommate allowed officers inside.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson also said Aghayeva has no pending appeals or applications with the agency, was placed in removal proceedings and has been released while she awaits an immigration hearing.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson did not address what, if any, representations the agents made to the building manager and roommate about who they were or why they were there.<\/p>\n
Aghayeva is a student in Columbia\u2019s School of General Studies, according to the legal filing, where she\u2019s pursuing a degree in neuroscience and political science. The filing also stated that the federal officials who detained her did not present a warrant and \u201crepresented that they were searching for a missing person to gain entry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The attorney listed on the filing, Carl Hurvich, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
A crowd of Columbia students and faculty members gathered in protest outside the campus’s gates on West 116th Street at midday, before the announcement of Aghayeva’s release.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE off campus,\u201d they chanted in unison.<\/p>\n
The protesters also specifically criticized Shipman and the university, saying, \u201cColumbia, your hands are red, you send your students to the feds!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to reiterate that all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the university, including housing, classrooms and areas requiring [Columbia ID] swipe access,\u201d Shipman said in her email to the school community. \u201cAn administrative warrant is not sufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Shipman said if law enforcement agents try to access nonpublic areas of the university, community members should \u201cask the agents to wait to enter any non-public areas until contacting [the school\u2019s department of] Public Safety,\u201d which will coordinate with the school\u2019s attorneys to respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo not allow them to enter or accept service of a warrant or subpoena,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mamdani also spoke to the president about four other students \u2014 Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia, who all have ongoing immigration cases. A spokesperson for the mayor did not say whether Mamdani and Trump discussed the case of City Council staffer Rafael Rubio, who has been held by immigration authorities since mid-January.<\/p>\n
This story has been updated with new information. Brigid Bergin contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Columbia University student detained earlier in the day has been released. Ellie Aghayeva wrote on social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-494289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}