A Columbia University student arrested by immigration officers inside her campus apartment was released from custody hours after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged President Donald Trump to let her go during his visit to the White House.
Neuroscience student Ellie Aghayeva was released from federal detention in New York City Thursday afternoon.
“I am safe and okay,” she wrote to her followers on Instagram. “I am so sorry but I am in complete shock over what happened and my phone is blowing up with calls from reporters. I need a little bit of time to process everything. I will come back soon. But please don't worry. I love you all.”
Department of Homeland Security officers “misrepresented” themselves to enter a residential building to arrest Aghayeva early Thursday morning, according to university officials.
“Dhs illegally arrested me,” she wrote on Instagram with a photograph from the back of a vehicle Thursday morning. “Please help.”
She was arrested at 6:30 a.m., according to Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman. Agents may have “made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person,’” Shipman said in a statement.
Her student visa was terminated in 2016, according to a statement from Homeland Security.
The building manager and her roommate allowed officers into the apartment, a spokesperson told The Independent.
Mamdani, who met with the president Thursday afternoon, said he had shared his concerns about her arrest during their meeting at the White House.
During a phone call that afternoon, the president told him she would be “released imminently,” according to the mayor.
Aghayeva, who is originally from Azerbaijan, frequently posts videos about life on campus and study routines on Instagram, where she has more than 106,000 followers. The aspiring social media personality has more than 114,000 followers on TikTok.
School of General Studies Dean Lisa Rosen-Mestch announced the student’s arrest in an email to General Studies students Thursday morning, according to The Columbia Spectator.
She described the arrest as “upsetting and unsettling for our community.”
Thursday’s arrest is not the first immigration enforcement action on Columbia property; graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in the lobby of his university-owned building last March, igniting a legal battle at the center of the Trump administration’s campaign to arrest and deport international students.
The arrest also follows campus protests demanding the university maintain stronger protections for international students against federal immigration agents at the university.
Columbia has stressed that “all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena” access nonpublic areas of the university, including housing and classrooms and other buildings that require a university ID. Administrative warrants — which are issued internally by federal agencies — are not sufficient, Shipman wrote.
“Do not allow them to enter or accept service of a warrant or subpoena,” she said.
New York City Council members were also briefed on the incident.
“ICE has no place in our schools and universities,” Speaker Julie Menin said in a joint statement with City Councilman Shaun Abreu.
“These activities do not make our city or country safer, but rather drive mistrust and danger,” they added. “As Columbia College alumni, our hearts are with the community there, and we have been in contact with the University to offer our assistance.”
Khalil continues to fight the Trump administration’s attempts to remove him from the country after his release from an immigration detention center in Louisiana last year.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and a prominent student activist against Israel’s war in Gaza, was stripped of his green card and arrested last March after Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally signed off on his removal, baselessly alleging Khalil and others promoted antisemitism and provided material support for terrorist groups, according to documents submitted in court filings.
He was jailed for more than 100 days while his legal team fought for his release, and federal judges have lambasted the administration’s “unconstitutional conspiracy” to violate the First Amendment rights of international students and faculty.
An immigration court judge has ordered his removal to Syria or Algeria over allegations that he omitted information from a green card application, which his legal team called meritless.
Mohsen Mahdawi, another Columbia student targeted by Rubio, was also granted release from federal custody after he was arrested during a citizenship interview last year. An immigration court judge has terminated his removal proceedings, finding no basis to deport him.
During his White House meeting, Mamdani also gave White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a list of four other students targeted by federal authorities and asked for the administration’s help to keep them out of custody, according to the Associated Press.
He mentioned the cases of Khalil and Mahdawi as well as Yunseo Chung and Leqaa Kordia — all of whom were targeted for their pro-Palestinian activism.
A federal judge has blocked federal agents from arresting Chung, and Kordia has been locked up in ICE detention for nearly a year.
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