A Columbia College scholar who filed a lawsuit towards the Trump administration was granted a brief restraining order towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who have been out to arrest and deport her. U.S. District Court docket Decide Naomi Reice Buchwald issued the order Tuesday (March 25) stopping the officers from taking Yunseo Chung into custody. “Nothing within the file has indicated in any means that she is a hazard,” Buchwald mentioned from the bench. Chung is the most recent scholar activist who participated in pro-Palestinian protests focused by the administration after the high-profile arrest of Columbia graduate scholar Mahmoud Kahlil.
A Division of Homeland Safety official alleged that Chung “engaged in regarding conduct,” citing Chung’s arrest after a sit-in protest (which they declare was “pro-Hamas”) at a library at Barnard School, a sister college to Columbia. The 21-year-old acquired a ticket for “obstruction of governmental administration,” in keeping with her lawsuit filed with CUNY Regulation College’s CLEAR (Creating Regulation Enforcement Accountability & Accountability) clinic. However ICE officers would present up at her mother and father’ residence on March 9, and the next day Chung’s lawyer was knowledgeable that her lawful authorized everlasting standing (Chung got here to the U.S. from South Korea on the age of seven) was being revoked. ICE brokers additionally looked for Chung at two residences together with her dormitory.
The federal government, by means of the workplace of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is arguing that Chung’s presence within the nation is stopping their overseas coverage aim of preventing antisemitism. Decide Buchwald swatted down their reasoning, stating that they needed to “present enough advance discover” to Chung and her authorized workforce. The decide additionally barred makes an attempt to switch Chung out of the Southern District of New York by ICE as they did with Kahlil by transferring him from a facility in Newark, New Jersey, to Louisiana. “No journeys to Louisiana right here,” she remarked.
“After the fixed dread behind my thoughts over the previous few weeks, this determination appears like 1,000,000 kilos off of my chest. I really feel like I might fly,” Chung mentioned in a press release to the New York Occasions after the ruling, including her gratitude to her attorneys, college students, and professors at Columbia who “have given me energy at each flip.” One in all her attorneys, CUNY Regulation Professor Ramzi Kassem, confirmed that Chung continues to be finishing coursework to complete her junior yr.
