Cornell PhD student who sued Trump administration faces detention

ISTANBUL

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reportedly moved to detain Cornell University PhD student Momodou Taal, one of the three plaintiffs suing the Trump administration over executive orders targeting pro-Palestinian advocacy by non-citizen students and staff.

Taal, 31, revealed on social media that unidentified law enforcement officers attempted to detain him at his home shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in his lawsuit.

"Trump is attempting to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court. ... This is part of a continued pattern in the Trump administration's flagrant disregard for the judiciary," Taal wrote Thursday on X.

His attorneys immediately filed an emergency motion to bar law enforcement from carrying out deportation proceedings. Shortly after, the Department of Justice contacted them, requesting Taal appear at a Homeland Security office in Syracuse, New York to be served a "notice to appear," a formal step in the deportation process.

"Lawyers at the so-called Justice Department made this request to his attorneys within hours of us having asked the court to stop them from doing precisely that," a member of Taal’s legal team told The Guardian. "It's very difficult to explain how unprecedented this is."

Taal, who has publicly denounced the administration’s policies, previously declared: "Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration."

The Trump administration has pursued the deportation of foreign students and faculty engaged in pro-Palestinian activism, raising concerns about free speech rights and due process under US law.