A Columbia University student was arrested on Thursday by federal immigration officers who apparently misrepresented themselves by posing as New York police officers looking for a missing child in order to to gain entry to a residential building to make the apprehension.
The acting president of the elite institution in New York City, Claire Shipman, wrote in a statement sent to the wider Columbia community on Thursday that the university was working to gather more information on the incident earlier that morning.
Sheadded the university was working to reach the family and providing legal support.
Shipman did not identify the student but multiple sources identified her as Ellie Aghayeva, an undergraduate student who posted a photo that appeared to show her own legs, possibly in a vehicle, in an Instagram story with the message: “Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help”.
A spokesperson for DHS confirmed the student’s identity but appeared to suggest she was no longer a student.
“ICE arrested Elmina Aghayeva, an illegal alien from Azerbaijan, whose student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment. She has no pending appeals or applications with DHS.”
A short time after Columbia’s statement , the Manhattan borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, wrote in a social media post that “ICE agents impersonated NYPD with fake badges and a phony missing persons bulletin for a 5 year old girl”, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
“They purposefully deceived campus housing/security to gain entry to the student’s apartment,” he added. “The level of civil rights violations that took place is staggering.”
A spokesperson for the New York police department said in a statement that the department “had no involvement in the federal operation”.
Following Aghayeva’s detention friends at the university frantically reached out to local officials for help. They said she is in her final semester at Columbia and majoring in neuroscience and political science.
According to a request for help sent to local officials by Aghayeva’s friends, which the friends also shared with The Guardian, Aghayeva sent an urgent member on Thursday to a group chat saying “ICE is in my house. They are trying to take me away”. The students then contacted a building security officer whom they say facilitated federal agents’ access to Aghayeva’s apartment.
Eli Northrup, an attorney who works as a public defender and is running for office in the state assembly, representing Columbia’s district, spoke with some of the students’ friends on Thursday morning and criticised what he couched as Columbia’s lapse in security.
“This is a massive institutional failure by Columbia, whose number one priority must be protecting its students,” Northrup wrote in a message to the Guardian. “No public safety officer should be admitting law enforcement of any kind into their buildings without thorough vetting. They should be doing everything in their power to get Ellie released immediately. We won’t stop fighting until she is.”
The arrest came nearly a year after upheaval on campus after immigration officials detained Columbia students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both Palestinians with valid immigration status, in a crackdown on dissent against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump administration detained them and other foreign scholars whom it accused of no crimes but who had been outspoken in the cause of Palestinian rights. The government argued that their advocacy posed a threat to US national security.
In a blistering opinion issued in September, a Boston federal judge found that their detention was unconstitutional and designed to chill speech.
Thursday’s incident sent fresh shock waves through the university’s campus Dozens of students and faculty gathered for an emergency protest outside the university’s gates on Thursday afternoon, calling for Aghayeva’s release and condemning Columbia for allowing federal agents into their facilities.
In a joint statement, the New York city council speaker, Julie Menin, and the council majority leader, Shaun Abreu, condemned the student’s detention.
“ICE has no place in our schools and universities,” they wrote. “These activities do not make our city or country safer, but rather drive mistrust and danger.”
Brad Lander, a former New York City comptroller who was arrested by ICE agents while escorting immigrants to court last year, also condemned the detention.
“Yet again, ICE is using blatantly illegal trickery to circumvent judicial warrant requirements and abduct a student. These are the tactics of brownshirts,” Lander wrote in a social media post. “That’s why I’ve long been calling to abolish ICE. And why Congress should not grant them one more penny. This lawlessness has to end.”
A spokesperson for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The mayor made an unannounced trip to Washington on Thursday to meet with President Trump.
