The Brief

A recent string of high-profile immigration enforcement actions at Columbia and other universities has sparked fear and caution among some students and faculty in Southern California — especially those who aren’t U.S. citizens.

Last spring, campus activists protested the war in Gaza and set up encampments at schools across the country, calling for their institutions to divest from companies, weapons manufacturers and other activities with ties to Israel.

When the encampments were dismantled, many participants faced arrest, suspension, loss of on-campus food and housing, doxxing, accusations of antisemitism and physical violence. Now, some participants worry they could also be removed from the U.S.

What’s been happening to immigrant students on college campuses?

The Trump administration has targeted students with lawful permanent residence (who have green cards) and those here under a visa.

In early March, Homeland Security agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil in Columbia University housing. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who recently completed his graduate studies, served as a negotiator between the school’s administration and Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups opposed to Israel’s war effort. Now Khalil is in a detention center, fighting to stay in the country with his wife, a U.S. citizen who’s expecting their first child. On social media, President Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was the first of “many to come.”

Soon after, Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral student at Columbia, fled the U.S. after her visa was revoked. Srinivasan said she was making her way home through a crowd of protesters last spring when police detained her and charged her with obstructing traffic and failing to disperse. Both charges were dismissed, but ICE agents still came knocking at her door.

Similar actions have been reported against visa holders at Brown, Cornell, Georgetown and another green-card holder at Columbia. As Axios reported, the State Department is also using AI to surveil students’ social media accounts and cancel the visas of those who “appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.”

Rafael Jaime, a doctoral candidate in English at UCLA and president of UAW 4811 — the union that represents about 48,000 student researchers, teaching assistants, and post-docs across the UC system — said the Trump administration's crackdown on noncitizens is a “clear attempt to instill fear in the campus community.”

“Campuses have long been bastions of free speech and protest,” he added. “This is an attempt to silence that.”

What does the law say?

Immigration attorneys have flagged Khalil’s arrest as particularly alarming.

“The law is very clear: A green-card holder cannot be stripped of their immigration status unless they're ordered removed by an immigration judge,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, faculty co-cirector at UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

To detain Khalil, the Trump administration has invoked a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which makes any “alien” deportable if the Secretary of State “has reasonable ground to believe [that their presence or activities] would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” In the 1990s, the late U.S. District Judge Maryanne Trump Barry (the president’s sister) wrote an opinion declaring the provision unconstitutional.

“Everybody who knows a green-card holder — everybody who knows a noncitizen — should be worried about a provision that gives the secretary of state the power to decide that an immigrant's presence is no longer good for American foreign policy. Because that has virtually no logical limit,” Arulanantham said. “This is not a power that we want to give to the unchecked discretion of any government official, in any administration."

Under normal circumstances, visa holders are more vulnerable than lawful permanent residents.

“Every time [visa holders] leave the country, when [they] come back, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] has the power to admit you or to deny your admission. Whereas a green card holder has to be let back into the country,” Arulanantham said.

Arulanantham added that it might be advisable for international students to have a lawyer on call and to be mindful of their social media.

How advocates are preparing to help SoCal students 

Since Trump’s reelection, there’s been an uptick in student requests at UC’s Immigrant Legal Services Center. The federal crackdown on international scholars has served to “aggravate student concerns,” said Vivek Mittal, the center’s managing attorney.

“As advocates, we’re really concerned about what's going on, and that what's happening at Columbia will happen here,” he said.

The center periodically holds Know Your Rights workshops for noncitizens. In a webinar last November, Mittal and his colleagues told students to weigh the risks of protesting. They also emphasized that there’s more than one way to contribute to a cause, including providing supplies for protesters and donating to organizations.

When it comes to potential encounters with immigration officials, Mittal encourages students to practice what they learn — including the constitutional right to remain silent and demand to see a signed judicial warrant — so they’re prepared to assert those rights in real life.

ICE agents cannot enter a private space without a warrant, but they have been known to employ a number of tactics to catch their targets, he added. This includes dressing in plain clothes, traveling in unmarked vehicles and lingering outside buildings, he said.

“It's always a good idea to talk to an immigration attorney to really assess your situation,” Mittal added.

UC’s Immigrant Legal Services Center provides free legal advice and representation for students and families.

Jaime, UAW 4811’s president, said international workers make up a significant part of the union’s membership.

Members are currently “organizing, going out and talking to others, making sure they know their rights,” he said.

The union will also host a webinar where members will learn how to respond if immigration officials come on campus or go to their homes.

“In fact,” Jaime added, “under our contract, the university is required to inform us if [ICE agents are spotted], to make sure that workers are protected.”

Dina Chehata, civil rights managing attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) chapter in Greater L.A., said her organization has hired more staff to help students “fight back against disciplinary actions that are trying to chill their First Amendment rights ... and also to help support the students facing criminal consequences for engaging in what we strongly believe is lawful conduct.”

Chehata’s chapter also just listed a position for a litigation attorney.

“We're very serious about escalating our challenges against the violations that students and other other community members are experiencing,” she said.

Last week, CAIR and other legal partners filed a lawsuit against UCLA, where a mob attacked pro-Palestinian students and faculty.

Chehata said she’s spoken with dozens of students who’ve faced arrest and disciplinary action.

“Understand what's at stake, understand what your rights are," she said. "And, also, don’t be discouraged, because as much as we are seeing a very serious targeting of First Amendment rights and protections, we are seeing equal, very sincere and powerful challenges being mounted.”

The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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