What happened at Columbia over the past year was not an isolated episode. It was a window into an ongoing reality that is invisible to most.

Around 6:30 am on February 26, 2026, federal agents arrived at a residential building near Columbia’s campus. They told building staff they were searching for a missing five-year-old child. There was no child. There was no warrant. Within minutes, they were inside. Columbia student and neuroscience researcher Ellie Aghayeva, GS ’26 was taken from her home before the sun came up.

It was not the first time. By then, federal immigration agents had been operating in and around Columbia for nearly a year. What follows is an overview of ICE detentions at Columbia since March of 2025. 

The first major arrest came on March 8, 2025, when Mahmoud Khalil was detained by plainclothes federal agents in the lobby of his own apartment building on campus. Khalil was an Algerian citizen and United States green card holder who had served as a spokesperson for pro-Palestinian campus protests. 

The same week, ICE agents arrived at Ranjani Srinivasan’s building three times, twice without a warrant and third time with judicial permission. By then, she had already gone to Canada. Srinivasan, an Indian citizen, Fulbright scholar, and doctoral student in urban planning, had her visa revoked by DHS without explanation. 

Not all of the cases happened on campus. On April 14, 2025, Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian national and US green card holder was arrested by masked federal agents when he traveled to a Vermont immigration office for a routine citizenship interview. On February 13, 2026, an immigration judge terminated Mr. Mahdawi’s removal proceedings.

Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who was not a Columbia student, but had become a visible figure in campus advocacy, was detained in March 2025 for staying in the US on an expired F-1student visa, and transferred to a detention facility in Prairieland, Texas. While in custody, she experienced her first-ever seizure and was handcuffed to a hospital bed for 72 hours. Kordia’s release did not come easily. An immigration judge ordered her release on bond twice before but the government kept her detained through automatic stays. Nearly one year after her detention, a Texas judge ordered her release for a third time, setting bond at $100,000. This time, the government did not appeal and she was released On March 16, 2026. 

Columbia has a written policy stating that federal agents must present a judicial warrant before accessing non-public areas of campus. In the Aghayeva case, as in several earlier ones, that policy did not hold. When Aghayeva was detained, acting President Claire Shipman responded quickly in a recorded video published on April 26, 2026, declaring the agents’ behaviors as “a frightening and fast-moving situation and utterly unacceptable for our students and staff,” urging the community not to allow agents entry without a judicial warrant. But, the ignorance of policy is not new. The day before Khali’s arrest, he had emailed then-interim President Katrina Armstrong directly, requesting protection, but she did not respond.  

The campus did not stay silent.

Jennifer S. Hirsch, a Columbia public health professor who participated in a hunger strike in support of Kordia’s release, has watched the university’s responses closely. She draws a contrast between Columbia’s record to that of other institutions. When a Tufts student was detained, she noted, “Tufts acted vigorously to secure her release. When a Bard student was held, the president of Bard spoke out publicly.” “By failing to protect international students, by failing to stand up for members of our community in the way that other institutions have done,” Hirsch said, “I think that Columbia has also really failed to protect freedom of speech, despite everything they say to the contrary.”

Members of campus were not silent among the detentions. At Columbia, students, faculty, and staff organized a series of protests outside the university gates. CU Stand Up, a faculty organizing group, has held Silent Vigils for ICE-abducted high school and university students across New York City since April 2025. On February 5, 2026, the Sunrise Movement Columbia organized a rally outside the 116th Street gates, uniting students, faculty and community members to protest against the immigration and custom enforcements. Participants chanted “No ICE, no KKK, no fascist USA,” and demanded that the university declare itself a “sanctuary campus.” Three weeks later, Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers held a protest at the Sundial, demanding that Columbia provide legal assistance to international student workers and minimize the release of student information to the federal government. 

Now, the courts have intervened in several cases. But release has not meant resolution. Khalil, who missed his son’s birth, was released on bail and continues to fight deportation. Kordia is free but remains in removal proceedings. Srinivasan is still in Canada.

Hirsch is careful not to overstate what the campus activism accomplished, including the hunger strike. “We were one small part of a national advocacy strategy,” she said. “Her legal team and lots of advocacy from many corners secured her release.” As for whether any of this adds up to progress: “ICE just picked people up in Harlem yesterday,” she said. “I don’t think that we’re making progress. I don’t think so at all.”

What has changed, she said, is who is showing up. “Faculty, staff, and students have begun to organize together,” Hirsch said. “After a long time in which students who have always been the most vulnerable have been the ones willing to stand up and take the most risks, it’s certainly heartening to see faculty and staff standing alongside them, and I think particularly staff who are also quite vulnerable, for them to have the courage to engage.”

Image via Bwog Archives