A pro-Palestinian student activist at Cornell University who was targeted by ICE for deportation has opted to leave the United States rather than continue fighting his deportation in court.
In a manifesto posted online on Monday, Momodou Taal praised the “student intifada,” derided concerns for the safety of Zionist students and called on his supporters to “escalate for Palestine.”
Meanwhile, a Columbia University graduate student who left the country after having her student visa stripped over last year’s pro-Palestinian protests is making her case, saying that she was not part of them. Speaking from Canada, Ranjani Srinivasan told CNN on Monday that she had not “self-deported” using a Department of Homeland Security app, as federal officials announced, but simply left the country after being told that she must.
Srinivasan, an Indian national, emphasized that while she had been cited during a protest at Columbia last year, she had been caught up in a crowd while returning from a department picnic and the citations had been dropped. “I’m not a pro-Hamas activist. I’m just literally a random student,” she told CNN. “It just seems very strange that they would spend so much, vast resources, in persecuting me.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that he had canceled the visas of more than 300 students in connection with the protests and that he anticipated canceling more as part of what the Trump administration says is an effort to combat antisemitism.
Among them is Taal, a British-Gambian national, who was ordered to surrender to ICE custody earlier this month, after preemptively filing suit against the Trump administration for seeking to deport him. In his manifesto, Taal said the court battle was ongoing but that he had “lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs.”
He then issued a call for readers to speak out against “the Zionist genocide of Palestinians.” He added, “The repression of Palestinian solidarity is now being used to wage a wholesale attack on any form of expression that challenges oppressive and exploitative relations in the US.”
Throughout his statement, Taal used language that, Jewish groups have said, echoes calls for violence against Israelis. At the top of the post he wrote, “Long live the student intifada!” referring to campus pro-Palestinian protests with the same word used for two Palestinian uprisings against Israel, the latter of which killed an estimated 1,000 Israelis.
He later added, “I remain unwavering in my commitment to a liberated Palestine; from the river to the sea. As the genocide continues unabated, I ask that you all continue to escalate for Palestine.”
Last year, many Jewish students and campus groups expressed concern that the wave of pro-Palestinian encampment protests created a hostile atmosphere. Taal appeared to dismiss those concerns, accusing “Zionist” students of targeting the protesters.
“For months on end, we’ve had to listen to — ad nauseam — concerns regarding the safety of Zionist students when they are the same students who dox, monitor and collaborate with law enforcement to target students of color,” he wrote. Taal’s lawsuit cited targeting by a national Jewish group, Betar US, and the group, which is not a student group, celebrated the government’s bid to deport him.
Taal did not say where he had moved to. At least two others targeted for deportation, including Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate, and Yunseo Chung, a Columbia undergraduate, are fighting in court to remain in the country.
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