By Andrea Rocha
NEW YORK, NY – Recently unsealed court records reveal that a high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent submitted a misleading affidavit to a federal judge to obtain a search warrant—part of the Trump administration’s effort to target Columbia University students for deportation, according to an article published by The Intercept.
The affidavit was unsealed Tuesday in federal court as part of a lawsuit filed by Columbia student Yunseo Chung, The Intercept reported. It was submitted by George Ioannidis, an assistant special agent overseeing ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations in New York. The search warrant was granted based on the claim that Columbia may have been “harboring” Chung and another student, allegedly in violation of federal law. However, legal experts told The Intercept that this assertion was inaccurate and was made with the intention of carrying out arrests.
ICE claimed that both students were unlawfully present in the United States, citing the revocation of Chung’s green card and another student’s visa. But, as The Intercept notes, ICE and the State Department do not have the authority to make such determinations without an order from an immigration judge.
Furthermore, the affidavit merely stated that Columbia refused to allow ICE agents on campus without judicial warrants—it offered no evidence that the university had actively concealed the students, The Intercept reported.
Attorneys who reviewed the affidavit said it misstated both facts and federal law. They questioned how Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger approved the warrant. “One would think a court would have wanted to drill down on that more before signing off on the warrant,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, an attorney at Human Rights First who also represents Chung.
“This affidavit is seriously problematic, and it’s extremely troubling that it would be offered to a federal court,” added David Leopold, an immigration attorney unaffiliated with the case, according to The Intercept.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote, “The entire basis for the criminal warrant was wrong.”
Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit representing Chung, said, “The agent’s sworn statement confirms that, under the guise of investigating Columbia, ICE’s goal all along was to arrest Yunseo, a permanent resident whose only apparent offense was participating in a protest related to Palestinian human rights.” Even the protest-related charges cited by ICE in the affidavit have since been dismissed, he noted.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 7 order, invoked Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to argue that the presence of Chung and others critical of Israel “could have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” The provision allows the Secretary of State to request the deportation of non-citizens if their presence is believed to harm U.S. foreign policy. However, as The Intercept underscores, ICE and the State Department still lack the legal authority to declare someone’s presence unlawful without an immigration judge’s order.
The only legal basis ICE cited for probable cause of a federal crime was that Columbia was allegedly “concealing, harboring, or shielding from detection removable aliens.” But this was undermined by the fact that one of the students, Ranjani Srinivasan, had already left the country by the time ICE applied for the warrant—a fact noted in Ioannidis’ own affidavit.
“Obviously, Columbia was not harboring someone who had left the country,” said Nathan Yaffe, attorney for both Srinivasan and Chung. “This is essentially saber-rattling by ICE, a warning shot meant to send a message to people who protest and members of their community,” he told The Intercept.
Although Srinivasan’s visa had been revoked, that alone did not make their presence unlawful. The same applied to Chung. “ICE misrepresented this to the court,” Reichlin-Melnick stated.
The anti-harboring statute cited by ICE requires that the individual in question be unlawfully present in the U.S. and that the alleged harborer take active steps to conceal them. “The statute is clear that if a person has legal status in the U.S., it is impossible to harbor them,” said Yaffe. “ICE’s affidavit confirms that Ms. Chung is a permanent resident—meaning she has legal status. Thus, by ICE’s own admission, there’s no good faith basis for ICE to have sought a harboring warrant related to Ms. Chung.”
Colangelo-Bryan summarized the incident: “Secretly and unconstitutionally, the government supposedly revoked Yunseo’s green card and then told a judge it needed to search her apartment for Columbia’s alleged ‘harboring’ of her. In other words, the government wanted a judicial fig leaf to enter Yunseo’s apartment and unconstitutionally arrest her,” The Intercept reported.
Ioannidis’ affidavit stated that the probable cause for “harboring” was Columbia’s refusal to allow immigration agents into nonpublic areas without a judicial warrant. He claimed that the university “refused, and continues to refuse, to permit immigration officers to locate and arrest” Chung and Srinivasan.
Columbia Law School professor Jamal Greene refuted this rationale, stating, “Refusing to comply with an administrative warrant to conduct a search of one’s private property is not and cannot be a criminal offense.”
Unlike many other students linked to Gaza-related protests, Chung has not been detained. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who is overseeing the lawsuit and ordered the unsealing of the warrant documents, has also issued an order prohibiting Chung’s arrest.
“The affidavit in support of the warrant is yet another example of the administration making clear that it won’t let details like legality and facts stand in the way of its campaign of political repression,” Yaffe stated.
He added, “As we continue to get more information through discovery about the administration’s misconduct here, we’re confident Ms. Chung’s legal claims will continue to be vindicated.”
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for May 29, according to The Intercept.
