An update on immigrants who were detained in Trump’s crackdown on campus activism
Mar 17, 2026, 2:21 PM
Leqaa Kordia, left, moves to embrace friends, family and suppporters after being released from the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
NEW YORK (AP) — Just over a year ago, the Trump administration began an immigration enforcement campaign that swept up multiple people who had taken part in pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. college campuses.
The last of those people, Leqaa Kordia, was released Monday after the government stopped fighting a judge’s repeated orders that she be freed on bond.
Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman and daughter of a U.S. citizen, had been in detention since her arrest March 13, 2025, in New Jersey during an immigration check-in. Federal officials cited Kordia’s role in what they deemed to be “pro-Hamas protests.” Though not well known as an activist, she had been arrested at a 2024 demonstration outside Columbia University in New York. The charges were later dismissed.
Kordia’s immigration case isn’t over. Federal officials accuse her of overstaying her student visa after leaving an educational program; she has said she believed she was allowed to stay under a different immigration mechanism she was pursuing.
Here’s where things stand with some others who were detained or on the verge of it. Some other students and scholars were deported or left the U.S. after learning their visas had been revoked.
Mahmoud Khalil was the first person whose arrest became publicly known during the crackdown on noncitizens who publicly criticized Israel and its actions in Gaza. A Syrian-born legal U.S. resident, pro-Palestinian activist and former graduate student whose wife is a U.S. citizen, Khalil had been a prominent figure in protests at Columbia in 2024.
He spent 104 days in detention before being released in June on a judge’s orders. He had missed the birth of his first child.
The government continues seeking to deport him and won a significant court ruling in January.
The Trump administration contends that Khalil — who has not been charged with any crime — forfeited his standing in the U.S. by participating in the demonstrations at Columbia, which officials characterized as antisemitic and pro-Hamas protests.
Khalil says his support of Palestinian human rights isn’t antisemitism, nor does it amount to support of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza.
Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University scholar from India and husband of a U.S. citizen, was arrested outside his Virginia home in March 2025, just after teaching a weekly class on minority rights. He was on a visa and studying peace processes in the Middle East and Asia.
Khan Suri was detained over his familial ties to Gaza and accusations that he spread Hamas propaganda; he said he supported Palestinians but not Hamas. His father-in-law had once worked with the Hamas-run Gaza government, but Khan Suri’s lawyers said their client barely knew his father-in-law.
Khan Suri was released on bond in May and is still litigating his case. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, heard arguments Tuesday’s regarding his bond.
Federal officers detained Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey, as she left her suburban Boston home in March 2025. She was on her way to meet friends for a fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The State Department said her visa had been revoked for reasons including a student newspaper op-ed she’d co-authored. It criticized the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel. Öztürk’s lawyers said she was being improperly being punished for speaking freely.
She was released in May. A judge ruled in December that Öztürk could return to teaching and to her research on children’s relationship to social media.
Federal agents searched a Columbia dorm and the family home of Columbia University student Yunseo Chung after she was arrested at a March 2025 sit-in at neighboring Barnard College over the expulsion of students who participated in pro-Palestinian activism. Born in South Korea, Chung had come to the U.S. at age 7 and had legal permanent residency.
The agents didn’t find her, and a judge soon ordered immigration agents not to detain Chung while she fought deportation. That legal fight continues.
Mohammed Hoque, a Bangladeshi student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, was arrested outside his home in March 2025. He was on a student visa and was pursuing a degree in management information systems.
Hoque maintained that he was targeted because he’d made pro-Palestinian social media posts. The government pointed to a 2023 misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction. The case was resolved with probation.
He was released in May on $7,500 bond, after an immigration court and then a federal judge ordered the government to let him go while his case plays out.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian who had legal permanent residency in the U.S. for a decade, was a student leader of protests at Columbia in 2024. About a year later, he was arrested at a citizenship interview at an immigration office in Vermont.
Mahdawi was freed a few weeks later. Since then, he has helped launch an immigrant legal aid initiative and walked in his Columbia graduation. Last month, an immigration judge blocked the government from deporting him.
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Associated Press writer Olivia Diaz contributed from Richmond, Virginia.
