What the arrest of a green card holder at Columbia University means for students at SoCal campuses

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Soon after, Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral student at Columbia, fled the U.S. after her visa was revoked.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.”