Immigration agents are allegedly trying to arrest and deport a Cornell PhD student who filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive orders cracking down on pro-Palestinian protesters.
Momodou Taal, a citizen of the UK and The Gambia, is one of three academics who sued the Trump administration over the weekend, alleging a pair of executive orders unconstitutionally threaten immigrants who protest the administration and its allies with deportation.
Early Friday morning, with hearings scheduled in the constitutional case next week, Taal got an email from a Justice Department lawyer citing the lawsuit, directing him to “surrender” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to court documents.
Taal’s attorneys told The Independent they have gotten no document describing why Taal could be facing removal, and that if his removal is based on the lawsuit itself, it’s unprecedented in American history for a foreign student to be deported for challenging the constitutionality of presidential actions. They said they heard from the university that as of this morning, Taal’s visa had not been revoked.
“That is something which should cause deep concern and outrage among everybody who wants to defend the most democratic principles in the Bill of Rights and to anyone who wants to prevent Donald Trump from accomplishing his goal of establishing a dictatorship in this country,” said attorney Eric Lee.
“This type of thing should not happen in a democracy,” he added.
Taal’s suit, filed with two other Cornell academics, challenges a pair of Trump executive orders signed in January.
The White House directives call for agencies to investigate and potentially remove non-citizens in the U.S. who “bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles” and “advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”
The president and his allies frequently describe all pro-Palestinian protests that took place across 2023 and 2024 as synonymous with activities aiding Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group. Trump vowed in a January statement to deport what he called “all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests.”
The federal complaint alleges that the executive orders violate First Amendment Protections for free speech and Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process based on a “vague, subjective, and overbroad standards that grant unfettered discretion to government officials.”
It points to comments from Trump officials like Justice Department civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell, who said in February the administration would put an end to “these disorderly demonstrations, supporting Hamas and trying to intimidate Jews” and “put these people in jail — not for 24 hours, but for years.”
As Taal’s complaint worked its way through the courts, with a planned hearing in the case March 25, law enforcement agents and vehicles appeared outside Taal’s home near Cornell’s campus on Wednesday, in what his attorneys believe was a prelude to arrest.
“Their response to the filing of the suit was to go to his house and threaten to arrest him,” Lee said.
That prompted the attorneys to ask a New York federal court for an emergency order barring Taal from being detained or deported while the constitutional case was ongoing.
They’re concerned the that the “lawless” administration might not follow a court order, even if the judge does stop the apparent deportation process. The administration recently defied a court’s order to halt or turn around a series of deportation flights bound for El Salvador in the midst of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s invoking of the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Administration lawyers have suggested that because the initial order was verbal, and because the planes eventually entered international airspace, they were not at fault.
Then, around 1am on Friday morning, Taal’s attorneys got a message from the Justice Department about surrendering the student to ICE, the first indication of any kind he was accused of an immigration offense.
The Independent has contacted the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The federal government was already scheduled to respond to parts of the suit on Saturday, and a judge ordered it on Friday to add in an explanation of whether the powers outlined in the executive orders being challenged in the lawsuit are the same provisions the Trump administration is using to attempt to arrest Taal.
The Cornell student has been at the center of controversy before. He was suspended last year over his involvement in protests and told he could lose his visa, though he later reached an agreement with the university to continue attending classes remotely this spring.
He has been criticized for posts after the Hamas attack on Israel arguing that “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary,” but has maintained he condemns the killing of all civilians.
Betar US, a right-wing, Zionist organization considered an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League, claimed in an email to The Independent it submitted Taal’s name to federal officials alongside other campus activists who’ve been detained.
The Cornell student said in a statement on Thursday he is undeterred in his activism.
“Am I worried at times? Of course,” he wrote on X. “Am I stressed beyond anything I’ve experienced before? Most definitely. But I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent. There is no point living in a world where 100s of children are slaughtered daily.”
The Trump administration has attempted to or succeeded in getting multiple academics it accuses of supporting terrorism and fostering antisemitism out of the country, though many maintain they were either mistakenly targeted or were singled out for constitutionally protected protest activism that supported the Palestinian cause.
Earlier this month, immigration agents arrested protest leader and recent Columbia University grad Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian U.S. green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, accusing him of “antisemitic activities” and supporting Hamas, which he has denied.
On Wednesday, a federal judge denied a Trump administration attempt to dismiss Khalil’s case challenging his detention on First and Fifth Amendment grounds.
Khalil argued in a recent op-ed from a Louisiana detention center that he’s being punished for speaking out about the Israeli war effort in Gaza, which international observers have alleged is a genocide.
“My arrest was 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,” he wrote in The Guardian.
On Monday, Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University post-doctoral fellow from India married to a U.S. citizen, on similar grounds outside his Virginia home.
The Department of Homeland Security alleges Suri was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and “has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas,” a seeming reference to Suri’s wife, a U.S. citizen who worked in the Gazan foreign ministry and whose father once advised the now-dead leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, according to The Washington Post.
Suri’s apparent X feed shows the scholar, who studies conflict and religious tolerance, criticizing civilian deaths and what he saw as violations of international law in the Israel-Hamas war.
Suri’s attorneys, as well as Virginia congressman Don Beyer, have criticized the arrest as unfounded.
“The ‘justification’ given for these violations of Mr. Suri’s right to due process is another violation of the Constitution: a blatant attack on the First Amendment,” Beyer said in a statement to The Independent. “Mr. Suri and his family are unfortunately the latest victim of President Trump’s assault on the freedom of speech.”
In the cases of both Khalil and Suri, the men are not accused of committing a crime but rather have been determined by the State Department to be threats to U.S. foreign policy and subject to removal.
Others say they’ve been mistakenly swept up in the campus crackdown.
Columbia urban planning student Ranjani Srinivasan of India fled the U.S. this month after her visa was revoked, for what federal officials said were activities supporting Hamas, and failing to disclose two past court summonses.
She was briefly arrested at a tense pro-Palestine protest at Columbia in 2024 where students occupied a campus building and hundreds were detained by police. She told CBS News she wasn’t involved with the protest and was detained as she walked home from a faculty picnic. Her case was later dismissed.
“I just found it absurd. I’m not a terrorist sympathizer,” she said. “I came to the U.S. because I really like the academic culture you have. A lot of academic freedom, something you don’t really find anywhere else in the world. Currently I do think that there is a crazy climate of fear in universities.”
