Pro-Palestinian British student leaves US citing detention fear

A British student at Cornell University has left the US after citing his fears about being detained and his personal safety following ongoing threats of deportation by the Trump administration. Momodou Taal has already been suspended twice for participating in pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protests on campus, Quds News Network has reported.

The doctoral candidate in African studies hold dual UK and Gambia citizenship. Last month, his lawyers said that he was asked to turn himself in and that his student visa was being revoked.

Taal was among a group of activists who disrupted a career fair on campus last year that featured weapons manufacturers, after which the university ordered him to study remotely. He previously posted online that “colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary,” which is a statement of fact in international law.

The student filed a lawsuit in mid-March to block the US federal government’s deportations of protesters, a bid that was denied by a judge last week. He had his student visa revoked even before he filed the lawsuit and was asked to surrender himself to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” Taal said on X on Monday. “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… For every person that has remained silent, just know that you are not safe either. Is the imprisonment of those who speak out against a genocide a reflection of your values? Is this the kind of nation you want to live in?”

Update:

Eid Mubarak

Long live the student intifada! pic.twitter.com/LDwKS9SG6C

— Momodou ✊🏿 (@MomodouTaal) March 31, 2025

The same judge who denied Taal’s request to order the government not to deport him also denied his request to halt the two executive orders that led to the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists. He is reportedly the second international student to leave the US after being targeted by the Trump administration, which it describes as “self-deportations”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas of students. During a press conference in Guyana, Rubio said that the administration is looking for “these lunatics” every day. His comments were in response to a question about Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student who was detained near Boston by masked and plainclothes agents of the federal immigration authorities on Tuesday.

“It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” Rubio said. “At some point, I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them, but we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.”

Rubio confirmed that the State Department revoked Ozturk’s visa and that Washington would take away any visa that has been issued previously if students participated in actions such as “vandalising universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus”. Rubio did not say if Ozturk has ever participated in such activities.

A video emerged on social media showing the Tufts University graduate student being arrested in the street by ICE officers. The Department of Homeland Security said that she was arrested for “glorifying and supporting terrorists” and alleged that she had shown support for Hamas.

Ozturk is one of several foreign nationals connected to prestigious American universities arrested by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism. A court order on Friday blocked Ozturk’s deportation while US District Judge Denise Casper determines whether she has jurisdiction over the case.

READ: Mearsheimer: ‘Israel and its supporters are biggest threat to free speech’

In March, pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE. Khalil had been one of the leaders of pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University last spring. He was taken from his student apartment building in lower Manhattan, and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transferred to Louisiana.

The arrest of Khalil was described as “the first arrest of many to come” by US President Donald Trump. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”

Columbia University also lost $400 million in federal funding after being named on a list of universities accused of failure to address alleged anti-Semitism. Sixty universities could also face funding cuts if federal investigations show evidence that they have permitted anti-Semitic behaviour. Campaigners point out that the Trump administration is following the pro-Israel line that criticism of the policies of the occupation state is “anti-Semitism”. Such a conflation is “wrong,” say pro-Palestinian activists.

When he campaigned for a second term in the White House, Trump pledged to stop the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted after Israel launched its deadly genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and deport any foreign students involved. Upon taking office, he began to issue executive orders signalling that he would carry out his threats.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist [sic] protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said Trump in a White House fact sheet. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers [sic] on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Earlier, Yale University suspended Iranian scholar Helyeh Doutaghi from its law school after a Jewish news website, which uses AI to generate articles, accused her of being a member of a “terrorist group”. Doutaghi said that she is a “loud and proud” supporter of Palestinian rights.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and post-doctoral fellow working at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, was detained by US customs agents, who accused him of “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media”. The US administration intends to deport him after labelling him as a threat to US foreign policy due to his and his wife’s support for Palestinian rights.

Columbia student Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old permanent US resident, also faces a deportation order, but a judge ruled that she cannot be detained.

An Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama, Alireza Doroudi, and a Russian medical researcher at Harvard University, Kseniia Petrova, have also been detained by immigration agents.

OPINION: The weaponisation of anti-Semitism: how a fight against hate became a tool of oppression