ICE, ICE baby (and CBP stuff too)

I guess they were masked so they can’t be easily held in contempt of court, and jailed until the student is returned to MA for a proper hearing?

I’d think it was more a general protection against being doxed.

In an environment where rule of law mostly works, the authorities can be obliged to disclose the identities of the agents involved. Whether we’re in such an environment is debatable.

Via Reddit, an open letter from Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia PhD student who fled to Canada:


1 Like

Its utterly disgusting the way Columbia has behaved in general.

They are letting ICE break the law in order to curry favour with the Trump administration.

Its pathetic behavior. They should be defending their students against this type of fascism.

Part of the playbook seems to be to move detainees immediately to another state with a more favored judiciary, ideally before anyone can get a hearing before a judge.

1 Like

Everyone has free speech as long as it’s something Trump likes. Otherwise your visa or permanent resident status will be revoked.

4 Likes

Signing an opinion piece criticizing a foreign county isn’t creating a ruckus. It’s possible she did more, but I haven’t seen evidence of that yet.

1 Like

So what should one do if grabbed by ICE? I’m wondering if screaming, “help, police, I’m being kidnapped” is your best bet.

You might need to go one step further – if you can get local police to react/respond, do something that causes them to take you into custody (as opposed to risking them letting ICE rendition you to their for-profit facility in Louisiana).

Awesome, let’s deport a huge critic of Putin to Russia. That’s going to go well for her.

And was definitely not a deportation requested by Russia.

Inevitably there will be a detainment-indistinguishable-from-kidnapping where the victim is armed and kills an assailant. We have too many guns in America for it to not happen.

Of course, it will be used as proof of violent illegal immigrants killing cops.

2 Likes

Yeah, now US News is going to ding Columbia in the “hides students from the gestapo” category.

1 Like

Coumbia’s President has now resigned.

She basically threw her students under the bus so her position became untenable with staff and students.

There seems to be a very serious problem in the US at the Trustee level. Far too many of them seem to be in cahoots with what is going on with Trump and his behavior.

This type of issues are existential for a place that focuses on higher learning and research.

The US really needs to do better here. Either you stand up and fight Trump or you really are part of the problem. There is no middle ground left.

1 Like

I don’t think in cahoots describes the situation. It’s more what happens to your university if all federal funding is pulled for political reasons.

Stand up and fire a bunch of staff immediately. Some capitulate and think they can fire a few now, keep most of their funding, and hope to fight another day. Their funding might get yanked tomorrow, or perhaps during Trump’s third term.

Sure.

But Columbia has an endowment of $14.8 billion.

They can easily absorb the loss of $400m in “grants” while they fight this.

There was no real reason to throw their students under the bus other than political expediency, as they are not hurting for cash.

There’s a reluctance to use the endowment as a war chest to use in politics.

Plus the admin could cut visas for international students there, further stifling income significantly.

Student visas are being revoked for social media posts.

1 Like

I think that at this point we need to start putting international sanctions on Rubio.

He isn’t going to get the message that his behavior is not ok until he himself is sanctioned.

Being SoS won’t save him either. He can be blocked from entering Europe, Canada, UK etc

1 Like

How chilling.