Attorneys for a Columbia University student who has been living legally in the U.S. since age seven are questioning whether the Trump administration, which has been seeking to detain and deport her, “provided incorrect or false information” to a magistrate judge to obtain a warrant to search her dorm room.
In a court filing submitted Friday, the lawyers for 21-year-old Yunseo Chung asked federal judge Naomi Reice Buchwald to publicly release documents associated with the government’s application for the warrant, which they say cited a federal “harboring” statute that makes it illegal to house people unlawfully in the country. That warrant was issued by a separate judge.
Chung’s family moved to the United States from South Korea when she was seven, and she became a lawful permanent resident in 2021, according to a court filing that is challenging the bid by the Department of Homeland Security officials to detain her.
Her attorneys won a temporary restraining order against the federal government in that case on March 25 that requires the government to get court approval before detaining or transferring Chung out of state.
Chung was arrested in early March for participating in a protest on Barnard College’s campus, which is affiliated with Columbia, that challenged disciplinary measures taken by the university against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Four days later, DHS agents visited the home of Chung’s parents, and four days after that federal agents executed a search warrant of the campus apartments of Chung and another student.
“The Warrant would only have been properly supported factually if the materials submitted to the issuing Magistrate Judge, including under oath, stated that Ms. Chung was unlawfully present in the United States. But Ms. Chung is a lawful permanent resident… and Secretary Rubio does not have the unilateral authority to revoke her status,” says the April 4 court filing. “Any possibility that the Court may have been provided incorrect or false information as a basis for the Warrant makes release of the materials critical.”
Rubio and other Trump administration officials have said they’ve revoked over 300 student visas under the power of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows for the deportation of non-citizens who are considered “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the United States. They’ve been citing that measure in a growing crackdown, they say to root out antisemitism on campuses, of foreign students who have participated in pro-palestinian protests at Columbia, Cornell, Tufts and other schools.
Two of Chung’s attorneys told THE CITY they were only aware of two cases, hers and Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, where federal officials have sought to detain and deport legal permanent residents — known as green card holders.
“The government is going after Ms. Chung for expressing her beliefs and opinions,” said one of them, Sonya Levitova. “That’s not how a free society should function, and it’s certainly not compatible with the First Amendment.”
Chung was arrested at the Barnard campus protest on March 5 and given a desk appearance ticket, a process that produces a fingerprinting record that passes quickly to federal agencies under a President Bush administration initiative called “Secure Communities.” As part of the initiative, which continued under the Obama administration, the FBI automatically sends fingerprint records to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs them against its database of immigrants.
Back in 2011, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo tried to keep New York’s fingerprint records from making their way to DHS amid objections from immigrants rights advocates, but the program rolled out anyway, with the federal government determining individual jurisdictions couldn’t opt out.
It’s not known if this is how federal officials got Chung, whose arrest was reported in the New York Post, on their radar.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, which is the entity allegedly investigating Columbia University under the harboring statute, declined comment.
The day after the search warrants were executed, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said they were connected to “an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”
Moving Targets
The legal filing in Chung’s case comes as the Trump administration continues to tighten its grip on elite institutions like Columbia, with threats of billions of dollars in additional funding cuts and the continued targeting of student protesters for alleged antisemitism.
On Monday, Columbia University announced that in proactive checks of its student exchange visitor database, school had officials identified another four students who had their visas revoked over a two-day period. The university declined to provide further details on those impacted.
Beyond Chung’s case, reports have emerged about other students and faculty in the month since Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest by federal agents, the first student targeted in the administration’s crackdown on students critical of Israel and its war in Gaza.
At Columbia, an Indian urban planning graduate student, Ranjani Srinivasan, fled to Canada in response to attempts to deport her, while Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian former student who allegedly overstayed her visa was detained by ICE.
Outside of New York, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Dr. Badar Khan Suri, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk were also detained and are fighting for their release from immigration detention.
Khalil is due before an immigration judge on Tuesday in Louisiana, where he’s being detained, while a federal judge in New Jersey considers whether Kahlil should be released from detention while his immigration case continues.
Last week that judge, Michael Farbiarz ruled in Khalil’s favor, denying the government’s request to dismiss the case.
The Trump administration is also facing legal challenges on other deportation fronts, including its transfer of immigrants that federal officials have identified as Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador without deportation hearings or other kinds of due process.
In the case of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a federal prosecutor admitted he was deported in error even as the Justice Department has argued in federal court that the administration doesn’t have the ability to bring him back. An immigration judge ruled in 2019 that Abrego Garcia can’t be deported to El Salvador because he’s likely to be persecuted there.
A federal judge ordered Abrego Garcia to be returned to the U.S. by midnight on Monday, but Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts indefinitely lifted that deadline late Monday, without the Supreme Court ruling on the merits of the case.
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