Tag: Columbia University

JHISN Newsletter 06/27/2026

Posted on June 27, 2026 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends, 

When good immigration news is hard to find, we look harder. The notorious Alligator Alcatraz detention camp in Florida is fully shut down as of this week, less than a year after it opened with sadistic fanfare from Trump’s minions. We hope, with many of you, that the expansion of Mayor Mamdani’s political power with this week’s primary victories will strengthen a pro-immigrant, anti-authoritarian agenda. And a Trump lawsuit targeting four NJ cities for allegedly “unconstitutional” sanctuary policies was just tossed out by a federal judge.

But the bad news is really terrible. Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that allows the federal government to continue stripping Temporary Protective Status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of US residents is a nightmare. Most immediately, 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians are now facing the reality of losing their TPS legal status by July 1—a loss that will affect everyone who is their neighbor, co-worker, healthcare patient, or friend.   

Our newsletter covers some of the mixed good/ bad immigration news out of this year’s NYS legislative session, which ended in early June. We then update you on the ongoing legal campaigns—and harassment—of two high-profile international students from Columbia University targeted for deportation.

Newsletter highlights:
  1. NY State Legislature gestures toward immigrant protections
  2. Deportation threats to Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil

1. Latest NY State Legislation Falls Short On Immigrant Protection

On May 21, NYS Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie noted that the 2026-27 state fiscal budget includes legislative provisions, signed by the governor, that protect our neighbors throughout New York from aggressive federal immigration enforcement. He suggested that local governments will be prohibited from collaborating with federal immigration enforcement officers and private detention facilities. He highlighted provisions that “will protect children in their schools and establish sensitive locations within our communities.” The official press release received endorsements from various elected officials, including Queens Assembly Member Catalina Cruz.

The perspective of immigrant justice supporters of the New York For All Act—proposed legislation which was never brought to a vote in the state legislature—was markedly different. The multi-organization coalition advocating for New York For All said, “The lack of political courage and moral leadership in Albany – and the failure to take a bold stand in the face of rising xenophobia – means that New York’s immigrant communities will continue to live with the threat that any encounter with government agencies can result in separation from their families.” 

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) outlined some of the Enacted Budget’s key elements, explaining which protections were included or fell short:

  • State and local employees may not gather information about immigration status, and cannot share personal data of NY residents with ICE…but the police are excluded from this restriction.
  • “Sensitive locations,” including hospitals, churches, and private homes, can deny entry to ICE agents. 
  • The right to free public education for children, regardless of the family’s immigration status, was established.
  • State and local agencies may not rent space to ICE for immigration detention nor financially support immigration detention facilities.
  • New Yorkers can sue local, state, and federal officials in state court when their constitutional rights are violated using the newly established Office of Immigrant Trust.

Republicans claim that these new protections mean that “New York is now a sanctuary state on steroids.” But there are, in fact, at least three significant elements missing from the new budget that progressive forces had fought for. First, although the formal 287(g) agreements that allow local governments to work with ICE (previously signed by twelve New York law enforcement agencies) were banned in New York, informal collusion between local police and immigration enforcement was not prohibited—that was called for in the New York For All Act. Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, noted, “The legislative package falls short of offering comprehensive protections by continuing to permit informal law enforcement collusion with ICE and Border Patrol.”

Second, state-funded counsel for immigrants facing deportation, part of the Access to Representation and the BUILD Act, was not included in the budget package. Although some money was secured for immigrant legal services, it was less than half of the $175 million called for by immigrant advocates.

Finally, the new measures banning face coverings for state, local, and federal officers in New York still allow for “tactical equipment” that covers faces.  Even with this legal loophole permitting ICE to deploy with tactical face masks, the federal government initiated a lawsuit against New York four days before the face mask ban was scheduled to go into effect. The Department of Justice has also initiated legal action against New Jersey, California, and Virginia, which sought similar mask restrictions. 

The New York Bar has explained why many of the items demanded and signed into law do not violate federal laws about police power and preemption. None of those explanations will stop the threats from Homeland Security to conduct an ICE surge in NYC. Passing the entire New York For All Act would help strengthen legal action against the overreach and violations of basic rights by ICE and border patrol federal agents.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Deportation Threat Ongoing for Palestinian Student-Activists at Columbia University

 “[T]he administration is abusing immigration law to silence me for speaking the truth about Palestinian suffering and genocide. When a government weaponizes immigration to punish speech, millions of immigrants and citizens feel that blow.” —Mohsen Mahdawi (June 10, 2026)

In Spring of 2025, Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, both Columbia University students, became two of the most prominent faces of international student-activists targeted for their Palestine solidarity work. The newly-installed Trump regime quickly weaponized immigration law and accusations of antisemitism to incarcerate both young men in its broader campaign to silence and punish university-based mobilizations against the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Both men are Palestinian. Khalil was born in a refugee camp in Syria; Mahdawi in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Khalil is a graduate of Columbia’s prestigious School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA); Mahdawi is currently enrolled in the MA program at SIPA. Both are green card holders and legal US residents. Both were accused of nothing beyond the “memos” from Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating that their presence in the country might undermine US foreign policy goals. Both were eventually released from detention after public outcry and legal challenges. 

And … both are still threatened with deportation through legal proceedings pursued by the federal government, even as their names have faded from most headlines.

Their ongoing legal battles differ. An immigration judge in February 2026 ruled that the deportation case against Mohsen Mahdawi be dismissed. Trump’s DOJ fired that immigration judge (unlike other judges, immigration judges serve at the will of the federal government) and appealed the decision. The US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ruled that the deportation case could go forward, and Mohsen’s case went to a second immigration judge who this month issued an order of removal that would send Mohsen to Jordan. Nevertheless Mohsen remains in the US while his legal team challenges the deportation order in the First Circuit Court on constitutional grounds. Mohsen declared:

“… I’m going to cut to the core of this issue, which is an issue that is related to the First Amendment. Do I have, as a green card holder, as a lawful permanent resident for 12 years, never committed a crime — do I have the rights that actually the citizenship questionnaire that I get tested on states that I do … do I have the right to free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression?” —on Democracy Now! (June 12, 2026)                                                              

Mahmoud Khalil’s case is on a different track, though he also is protected for now from a deportation removal order that has been set in motion. His legal team made a second appeal in May 2026 to the US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to dismiss the deportation case against him, after new revelations of government misconduct. The Trump regime is accused of “secretly engineering” the outcome of his case. The allegations of misconduct are corroborated by statements from former immigration judges, former BIA workers, and accumulating evidence that top government officials pressured judges to “decide” cases with predetermined outcomes in spotlight cases like Khalil’s, and to expedite deportation orders. One legal decision against Khalil was handed down by the BIA in a mysteriously speedy nine days. 

Meanwhile, a legal challenge in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was decided in late May against Khalil, and a new challenge was immediately filed by his team in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which also separately requested a Supreme Court review of the Third Circuit decision. “We hope the Supreme Court will recognize how dangerous the Third Circuit’s decision was, not just for Mahmoud but for other non-citizens the administration has its vengeful sights upon,” said Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Regardless of the outcome of their cases, Mohsen and Mahmoud remain targets of merciless legal harassment through a federal government campaign to deport them—and to silence, repress, and frighten others who would speak out.  

Columbia University has to date made no public statements in support of Mohsen, a current student, or Mahmoud, a recent graduate. The University has been operating since July 2025 under an unprecedented “settlement”’ with the Trump regime, in which the University paid the government $221 million, and agreed to a set of institutional changes demanded by the federal government. One of those demands was that the University start asking all international applicants “questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States.” Or, in the words of Marco Rubio, “we are not going to be importing activists into the United States.” 

WHAT CAN WE DO? 
  • Join the weekly vigil every Monday at 12pm near Columbia’s campus to protest DHS and ICE targeting of students, organized by CUIMC Stands Up.

 

In solidarity and with collective care,

Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

 

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN. 

JHISN Newsletter 03/21/2026

Posted on March 21, 2026 by - News, Newsletter

Dear friends,

There is some important good news this week amidst the cascade of bad news, national and global—including the grim assessment that the US is no longer a functioning democracy, according to the world’s leading democracy watchdog. Sweden’s prestigious Variety of Democracies (V-Dem) Institute writes in their newly-released report, “The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times.”

But the autocrat’s project also has cracks, and good news includes the release from detention this week of Dylan Contreras, the Bronx high school student arrested by ICE in May 2025. And our second newsletter article reports the end of Leqaa Kordia’s incarceration by ICE, when she finally walked free on March 16.

Our first article investigates the very bad news of the Trump regime’s surge toward holding immigrant detainees in commercial warehouse spaces turned ‘mega detention’ centers across the US.  

Newsletter highlights:
  1. New architecture of deportation: ICE warehouses
  2. Leqaa Kordia freed after one year

 

Warehouse, Social Circle, Georgia

1. Amazon Prime, But With Human Beings: Warehousing Immigrants

In the run-up to the midterm elections, the Trump regime is signaling a tactical retreat from its increasingly unpopular policy of mass deportation. This change in public posture is reflected in the president’s firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and his call for a “softer touch” on immigration enforcement. The White House has even quietly urged House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportation altogether. After meeting with Trump’s border “czar” Tom Homan in Albany on March 6, Governor Kathy Hochul sounded convinced that ICE won’t escalate enforcement in New York any time soon. 

Still, the machinery of mass deportation grinds on. Nationally, ICE arrests were down about 11% from January to February, but still four times higher than they were before Trump took office. More than 70,000 people are in immigration detention. In NYC, courthouse arrests continue. Rapid response teams in our neighborhood report continued ICE kidnappings, especially off the streets of Corona.

Perhaps the most damning evidence that mass deportation is still on the agenda—and might ramp up after the elections—is the regime’s rush to build out massive infrastructure for new immigrant detention centers. Flush with $45 billion appropriated for this purpose by Congress, ICE is buying a network of commercial warehouses that it plans to retrofit into immigration prisons. The goal, says ICE Director Todd Lyons, is to be “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

The plan includes 16 new “processing centers” and 8 large detention centers to hold 7-10,000 people each. Reportedly, 9 of the projected 24 warehouses have already been purchased. One of the planned detention centers, in South Circle, Georgia, is expected to confine more people than any prison in the US.

To speed things up, the regime is using the US Navy’s procurement system, which allows them to bypass federal contracting requirements. By purchasing and subcontracting out the renovation of its own detention facilities, ICE also evades many state and local sanctuary restrictions. GEO Group, CoreCivic, and other profiteering private prison contractors are being tapped to run the facilities.

Conditions at privately-run immigration lockups are particularly grim. Systematic abuse serves to pressure refugees, asylum seekers and others with provisional status to abandon their legal claims and agree to “voluntarily” self-deport.

GEO Group, the country’s largest private prison operator, has been “churning out deportations almost at the rate of approximately 100% of [the company’s detention facilities’] capacity per month,” executive chairman George Zoley said in an earnings call in November. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” Zoley said on the call. “Our existing facilities are full throttle.”  —Huffpost (March 7, 2026)

This is a specific form of mass deportation that the Trump regime is committed to expanding at breakneck speed.

Local opposition to the new warehouses has been fierce in many places and has successfully prevented ICE from finalizing some pending purchases. For instance, after ICE announced it acquired a former Pep Boys warehouse in Chester, NY, local politicians, community activists, and national Democratic leaders reacted with outrage. A petition denouncing ICE’s plan quickly gathered tens of thousands of signatures. On February 17, ICE released a statement denying that it had bought the building, saying its previous claim was “a mistake.”

A major battle is currently taking place over the future of a giant warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey, which ICE purchased from Goldman Sachs for $129.3 million—more than double its official taxable value. Several hundred local residents and activists attended a protest outside the site on February 28. Opposition is bipartisan, based on anti-ICE sentiment as well as the practical impact on local services and utilities. Gothamist reports that ”Many local Republicans also oppose the Trump administration’s plans for the ICE detention facility in Roxbury Township, despite saying they broadly support detention centers as a means of immigration enforcement, just not in their backyard.”

On March 11, a federal judge temporarily halted renovation work on an ICE warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland, ruling that the administration had illegally bypassed a required environmental review. It remains to be seen if this ruling will hold up on appeal, and what implications it may have for other facilities.

ICE’s plan–already underway–for a sprawling network of detention warehouses cuts against the narrative that the Trump regime is “softening” immigration enforcement. In fact, they are literally laying the groundwork for a new, intensified stage of mass deportation.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

2. Palestinian detainee and solidarity activist Leqaa Kordia walks free

“DHS insists they are targeting criminals. But all I see here [at Prairieland Detention Facility] are mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers. Some have active green cards. Nevertheless, they are transferred from detention center to detention center. It is human trafficking, by another name.” –Leqaa Kordia, Zeteo (March 9, 2026)

She is the name many of us could not remember. She was never a Columbia student but was regularly referred to as one. She was held by ICE for 12 months and 3 days inside a women’s detention center in Texas, 1,500 miles from her home and community in New Jersey, and largely out of the media spotlight. In February, Leqaa Kordia fainted, had a seizure, and was hospitalized, in shackles. Her story started to receive national attention.

On International Women’s Day this month, Kordia, still imprisoned, published an essay that shared the stories of the women she lived with inside Prairieland: “We laugh together. We cry together. When somebody is crying, everybody is crying. When somebody is laughing, everybody is laughing. We try to do anything to make anybody happy …. We have each other. We only have each other.” In Kordia’s first public speech after her release on March 16, she spoke of her sadness at leaving behind the beautiful, courageous women and men still living in “ICE dungeons.”

In April 2024, Kordia was arrested by NYPD alongside more than 100 protesters outside Columbia University’s locked gates. The group was supporting students inside who had launched the historic Gaza solidarity encampment, demanding a ceasefire and university divestment from the Israeli war-machine. Nearly 200 members of Kordia’s extended family in Gaza have been killed. Although charges were dropped against Kordia and the other protesters in 2024, ICE obtained Kordia’s sealed arrest record from NYPD. Federal prosecutors then tried to build trumped-up “money laundering” charges based on a $1000 check that she sent to support relatives under siege in Gaza. 

One year after participating in the protest, Kordia was ambushed by ICE during what she thought was a routine check-in in Newark, NJ, in March 2025. The Trump regime had just started its campaign of politically targeting noncitizen students and protesters who called for an end to the genocide. Many of those targeted, like Leqaa, are Palestinian.

The Trump regime’s rounding up of international students and faculty who stood in solidarity with Palestine was found to be unlawful in September 2025. Yet Kordia—not a student but a waitress in Paterson, NJ—still languished in detention long after more well-known detainees like Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil were released. Khalil published a moving public letter to Kordia during Ramadan this month while she was still incarcerated: 

“I keep replaying what it felt like to walk into those detention centers. How impossible it is to describe to anyone who hasn’t lived it …. Leqaa, I want so badly to tell you that the world has stood by you. But I refuse to lie to you. The truth is that the world has failed you, and so have we. I cannot grasp that you remain, a full year later, thousands of miles away from your home, from your family, from the life you were building. And for what? For the crime that has followed our people across continents and generations: being Palestinian and daring to speak our truth.”

On Monday, March 16, the world stopped failing Leqaa Kordia. Mayor Mamdani had reportedly asked for her release; Columbia-Barnard faculty had organized a week-long relay hunger strike in solidarity with Leqaa; and her legal team and community in Paterson had never given up their efforts to bring her home. Leqaa finally walked out of Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas after 368 days. She still faces ongoing deportation proceedings.

Tens of thousands of detainees remain in cages. Kordia’s challenge to us is to remember their dignity and reinvent what solidarity can mean in this era of ‘mass deportation’ and massive social suffering in immigrant communities.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

  • If you are able, consider a donation of any amount to the LaunchGood fundraising campaign for Kordia to help with medical expenses and the ongoing legal fight against her deportation.
  • Support Justice for Migrants which offers material assistance and information for women and men detained at Batavia Federal Detention Facility outside Buffalo, NY.

 

In solidarity and with collective care,
Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network (JHISN)

Follow @JHSolidarity on Facebook and Twitter and share this newsletter with friends, families, neighbors, networks, and colleagues so they can subscribe and receive news from JHISN.