Federal agents briefly detain Columbia University student taken from campus housing

By Maria Tsvetkova and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK, Feb 26 (Reuters) – U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents misrepresented themselves as searching for a missing person when they entered a Columbia University residential building early on Thursday and detained a foreign student, the university said.

Hours after the student was taken from her residence, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had been assured by President Donald Trump that she would be freed, DHS said it had freed the student and launched removal proceedings against her. 

DHS had said the student, Elmina Aghayeva, was from Azerbaijan and in the U.S. illegally. Aghayeva’s lawyers said in a petition filed in Manhattan Federal Court that she was held without justification. 

An afternoon post from an Instagram account believed to be Aghayeva’s said she had been released.

“I just got out a little while ago. I am safe and okay,” the post said, adding it was made from a car on a ride home.

In an early morning message to the university community, Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said: “Our understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person.'”

Shipman added that law enforcement agents need a judicial warrant or subpoena to enter non-public university areas, including housing and classrooms.

DHS said the building manager and Aghayeva’s roommate let its agents in. The department denied that agents had misrepresented their intentions.

“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,” DHS said.

Aghayeva’s lawyers, in a petition filed in Manhattan Federal Court, said she was “wrongly held in detention without justification.” She entered the United States in 2016 on a visa and is an undergraduate student at Columbia, her lawyers said.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Katherine Failla said Aghayeva should not be deported without a court order.

Shortly before the post about Aghayeva’s release, Mamdani said on X that he had brought up her detention at a meeting with Trump, and in a later call the president told him that the student “will be released imminently.”

Even during Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown, arrests of students on campuses or in campus housing remain rare.

The last arrests on the Columbia University campus occurred about a year ago, after pro-Palestinian protests, and included Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent activist who was released from a jail for immigrants three months later and continues to challenge in court efforts to revoke his U.S. lawful permanent residency green card and deport him.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Donna Bryson and Bill Berkrot)