Columbia Student Released From Custody — All Detainees Must Be Freed - Left Voice
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The ICE abduction of Columbia student Ellie Aghayeva is an attack on all immigrants, and shows the need for greater campus and community organization to confront ICE and Trump’s reactionary agenda across NYC and the entire country.

Thursday morning, the press and activist networks mobilized as Columbia University announced to the campus community that a student, Ellie Aghayeva, had been taken from her student housing by Department of Homeland Security agents earlier that morning. The agents appear to have lied, claiming to be searching for a missing person in order to gain access to the building. By the end of the day, Ellie was home again, thanks to a public uproar, including a protest outside the university gates, and a phone call to Trump by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But thousands of New Yorkers and tens of thousands of people nationwide are still in immigration enforcement custody and must be released.

After news of Aghayeva’s arrest broke, a protest demanding her return was immediately called for noon on Thursday, outside the gates of the university so that community allies would be able to attend. This detention also took place less than one day after Student Workers of Columbia (UAW 2710) held a protest in the center of campus as part of the union’s ongoing contract campaign, focusing on demands for greater protections for international students and sanctuary campus protections for all non-citizen students.

This detention happened almost exactly a year after fellow Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil had his green card revoked and was taken from the lobby of his university-owned apartment building and held in custody for 104 days, missing the birth of his child. Three other Columbia students were detained and/or had their visas revoked last spring after being targeted for their alleged protest activity in solidarity with Palestine. Khalil is still in a protracted legal battle following his release and remains at risk for deportation.

This detention also follows the detention of Leqaa Kordia, who was arrested by ICE outside of Columbia’s gates in March of 2024 and remains in ICE detention to this day. She has suffered medical complications during her almost year-long detention in Houston. Autonomous individuals at Columbia have started a “relay hunger strike,” during which participants will not consume food or water for 12 hours, to demand Kordia’s release from ICE detention.

The university claims immigration enforcement agents are not permitted on campus without a judicial warrant. But the Columbia chapter of the Sunrise Movement, which held an “ICE off Campus” rally earlier this month, pointed out in a video posted to Instagram earlier this week that Columbia public safety officers allowed ICE to enter campus to search Yunseo Chung’s dorm last spring.

Thursday afternoon, Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who was already meeting with Trump about funding for new housing in the city — spoke to Trump and successfully negotiated Ellie’s release. She later posted to Instagram to confirm that she was on her way home.

It is good that Mamdani was able to facilitate Aghayeva’s release, but ICE arrested over three thousand New Yorkers in 2025, and an estimated 73,000 people are currently being held in ICE detention nationwide. The release of one high-profile student, surely made possible in part by the specter of the response to ICE in Minneapolis and St. Paul, doesn’t free the rest of the detainees, and it doesn’t protect those who are being targeted by ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies on an ongoing basis. It is essential to build a robust response from students and workers around the country. We must stand up to immediately demand the release of all detainees and build a fight for full rights for all immigrants. Similar to the mobilizations last year for Mahmoud Khalil, we must mobilize in the streets and organize in our schools and workplaces. We need walkouts, protests, and mass action; if this can happen to Aghayeva, it can happen to any international student or immigrant student. If ICE can lie to enter our campuses, it puts everyone at risk.

Universities should be places to learn and explore ideas, not places of ICE terror. This student’s detention is a horrible example of the fact that university protocols requiring judicial warrants are not enough to keep campus community members safe. We must organize for real sanctuary campuses: no ICE and no cops on campus, no collaboration between the university and the Department of Homeland Security, no handing over of information on activists or immigrants, and no capitulations to Trump’s demands on universities.

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