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immigration and customs enforcement
Another Columbia Protester Targeted for Deportation Sues Trump
One of Yunseo Chung's attorneys said that the Trump administration's "efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism."
Mar 24, 2025
Yunseo Chung, a junior at Columbia University, sued U.S. President Donald Trump and other top officials in the Southern District of New York on Monday, challenging "the government's shocking overreach in seeking to deport a college student... who is a lawful permanent resident of this country, because of her protected speech."
The 21-year-old, who moved from South Korea to the United States with her family at age 7, participated in some student protests on Columbia's campus "related to Israel's military campaign in Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians," states the complaint. "Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests. She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns."
Earlier this month, she was arrested by the New York Police Department at a student sit-in "to protest what she believed to be the excessive punishments meted out by the Columbia administration to student protesters facing campus disciplinary proceedings," the document details. "Mere days later... the federal government began a series of unlawful efforts to arrest, detain, and remove Ms. Chung from the country because of her protected speech."
The suit asserts that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) "shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech," specifically, "university students who speak out in solidarity with Palestinians and who are critical of the Israeli government's ongoing military campaign in Gaza or the pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. government and other U.S. institutions."
Professors at other U.S. universities called the Trump administration's targeting of Chung " frightening" and "absolutely chilling to free speech."
In addition to Trump, Chung is suing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and William Joyce, head of ICE's field office in New York. Her lawyers are seeking a temporary restraining order "barring the government from detaining her based on her protected speech and in the absence of independent, legitimate grounds."
Naz Ahmad, one of Chung's lawyers and co-director of Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), toldThe New York Times that the Trump administration's "efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism."
"Like many thousands of students nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline," Ahmad added. "It can't be the case that a straight-A student who has lived here most of her life can be whisked away and potentially deported, all because she dares to speak up."
The newspaper noted how Chung's case resembles that of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident arrested earlier this month after helping lead protests at Columbia, where he finished graduate studies last year:
On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor's office, told Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung's attorney, that the secretary of state, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung's visa. Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Carbone responded that Mr. Rubio had "revoked that" as well.
The conversation echoed an exchange between Mr. Khalil's lawyers and the immigration agents who arrested him and who did not initially appear to be aware of his residency status.
After his arrest, Mr. Khalil was swiftly transferred, first to New Jersey and ultimately to Louisiana, where he has been detained since. The statute that the Trump administration used to justify his detention and Ms. Chung's potential deportation says that the secretary of state can move against noncitizens whose presence he has reasonable grounds to believe threatens the country's foreign policy agenda. Homeland security officials have since added other allegations against Mr. Khalil.
Chung and Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, aren't the only critics of Israel's assault on Gaza targeted by the administration. As Common Dreamsreported last week, masked immigration authorities "abducted"Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow on a student visa. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said Rubio determined Suri's "activities and presence" in the United States "rendered him deportable."
Chung's complaint points to the cases of Khalil, Suri, Columbia graduate student
Ranjani Srinivasan, Leqaa Kordia, and Cornell University doctoral student Momodou Taal. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee earlier this month sued the president, Noem, and DHS on behalf of Taal, Cornell doctoral student Sriram Parasurama, and professor Mukoma Wa Ngũgĩ over "the Trump administration's unconstitutional campaign against free speech."
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IRS, ICE Near Deal to Share Confidential Tax Data on Undocumented Immigrants
"No undocumented will trust the IRS ever again, and so they'll stop paying taxes," said one journalist. "And that was a pretty sweet deal for the U.S., since they did pay their fair share—billions of dollars each year."
Mar 24, 2025
Undocumented immigrants, who contribute nearly $100 billion in taxes each year and help fund benefits like Social Security and Medicare while remaining ineligible to receive them, are expected to soon lose the privacy afforded to them by a long-standing Internal Revenue Service policy as the IRS nears a deal with the Trump administration to help with immigration enforcement.
The IRS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are reportedly closing in on an agreement under which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons could request taxpayer data, including names and addresses, of undocumented immigrants who are being investigated for violating immigration laws in order to help officials locate them to carry out deportations.
The Washington Postreported Saturday that after weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration is close to finalizing the deal in an effort to speed up its mass deportation agenda, under which hundreds of immigrants have been rounded up and sent to be detained in El Salvador despite a court order prohibiting their deportation. ICE deported 11,000 immigrants last month, with people who were only accused of committing civil immigration offenses targeted despite Trump's claims that people who had committed violent crimes would be targeted for deportation.
The IRS deal represents "a shocking breach of trust," said former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Juliette Kayyem.
The former IRS commissioner, Doug O'Donnell, refused to hand over taxpayer data when the administration requested it last month, and resigned shortly after. Melanie Krause, who replaced O'Donnell as acting commissioner, "quickly signaled an interest in collaborating with Homeland Security," according to the Post, and has met several times with DHS and Treasury officials.
Two immigrant rights groups, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and Immigrant Solidarity Dupage, sued the IRS earlier this month to stop the agency from releasing taxpayer data to ICE and DHS, but last week the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia refused to issue a temporary restraining order "after the IRS represented that information had not yet been released," according to government watchdog Public Citizen, which represented the plaintiffs.
"Attempts by the Trump administration to gain access to the confidential taxpayer databases to engage in mass removal of workers would violate the tax law that protects the privacy of all taxpayers and undermine the protections promised to every taxpayer who files tax returns with the IRS," said Nandan Joshi, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group. "Attempting to gain access to personal and confidential taxpayer information crosses a line that Congress put into place after [former President] Richard Nixon used tax records to go after his enemies during Watergate."
Joshi said the IRS must disclose the terms of its "unprecedented information sharing agreement."
"The administration's desire to speed up their deportation agenda does not justify jettisoning decades of taxpayer protections," he said. "If this deal is being negotiated in good faith, the government should not need to keep it secret."
Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, a Christian humanitarian group, said the group has long assured undocumented immigrant communities that people can file and pay their taxes without fear of being targeted by immigration authorities "because the IRS explicitly promised they won't talk to ICE."
Under the proposed deal between the IRS and ICE, said journalist Rafael Salido, no undocumented immigrant "will trust the IRS ever again, and so they'll stop paying taxes."
The administration's "attempt to hijack confidential taxpayer data for immigration enforcement in the middle of tax season is not only disturbing and unprecedented, it is reckless," said Kevin Herrera, legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance, which is also representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the IRS.
Undocumented immigrants who file their taxes with individual taxpayer identification numbers "rely on legal protection of their private information to feel safe paying into programs like Social Security, Medicare, and thousands of other essential government services that all Americans use," said Herrera. "Without the assurance of privacy, our entire tax system will be eroded. We will not be idle while our communities are under attack. We will continue to seek judicial intervention and use every tool at our disposal to stop this administration's campaign of prejudice and terror."
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In Rebuke to Trump, Court Orders Mahmoud Khalil Case Moved to New Jersey
"This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud," said Khalil's wife. "His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand."
Mar 19, 2025
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident arrested earlier this month and slated for deportation by immigration authorities over his pro-Palestine activism, should be heard in New Jersey—not Louisiana as sought by the Trump administration—and reaffirmed an order blocking his expulsion from the country pending the outcome of his legal challenge.
Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that since Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in New Jersey when he lodged a legal challenge to his detention, his case should be transferred to the Garden State. Last week, Furman—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—issued and then
extended an order temporarily barring Khalil's deportation.
"This is a first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud," Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, who is eight months pregnant, said in response to Wednesday's ruling. "His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against Israel's annihilation of Gaza. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes DHS officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana.
Accused of no crime and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was targeted following U.S. President Donald Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. The Trump administration has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which empowers the secretary of state to expel noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a member of Khalil's legal team, said Wednesday that "the government transferred Mr. Khalil to a remote private prison in Louisiana hours after his arrest and the filing of his original habeas petition—an intentional and retaliatory attempt to silence his speech in support of Palestinian rights and interfere with the jurisdiction of the New York and New Jersey courts."
"Mr. Khalil should be free and home with his wife awaiting the birth of their first child, and we will continue to do everything possible to make that happen," Sisay added.
ACLU senior staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman, who also represents Khalil, said that "this is just the beginning, but it is a moment to celebrate."
"The court's ruling sends a critical message to courts across the country, who are sure to face similar unprecedented challenges to their authority in the days that come, that the judiciary must not shy from its constitutional role," he continued. "And no judicial role is more important than acting as a check on executive abuses the Trump administration has made the defining feature of its first 60 days."
"After this first step, we will eagerly and aggressively seek to get Mahmoud out, bring him home, and then defend his and others' right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation," Kaufman added.
Another lawyer for Khalil, Amy Greer, said: "We are ready to fight just as hard for Mr. Khalil in the district of New Jersey. He was taken by plainclothes federal agents, transferred in the middle of the night across state lines, and has been detained for over a week now, all because of his advocacy for Palestinian freedom. We will not stop working until Mr. Khalil is home with his wife."
Democracy defenders have warned that Khalil's arrest—which sparked protests across the nation—is a blatant violation of constitutionally protected free speech rights and a sign of advancing authoritarianism. Trump vowed last week that Khalil was "the first arrest of many to come."
On Tuesday, Khalil released a
letter calling himself a "political prisoner." He called his arrest and detention "a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza," and "part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent" from which no one is immune.
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