ICE Asks Cornell Student Who Sued Trump Administration to 'Surrender' to Authorities

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are allegedly attempting to detain a Cornell University student who filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for seeking to deport foreign students and staff advocating for pro-Palestinian causes.

Cornell PhD student Momodou Taal took to social media to share that "law enforcement from an unidentified agency" came to his home attempting to detain him. His attorneys then submitted a motion to the government seeking to prevent law enforcement from "attempting to detain, remove, or otherwise enforce the two executive orders against Mr. Taal."

"This morning, shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in my lawsuit demanding the courts strike down Trump's executive orders attacking free speech, law enforcement from an unidentified agency came to my home in Ithaca, New York. I believe they planned to detain me," Taal wrote on X. "Trump is attempting to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court.... This is part of a continued pattern in the Trump administration's flagrant disregard for the judiciary."

31-year-old Taal is one of three plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, aiming to obstruct executive orders that seek to deport non-citizen university students and staff for participating in pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Taal's lawyers then received email correspondence from the Department of Justice on Friday morning inviting Taal to the Homeland Security investigations office in Syracuse "at a mutually agreeable time" so that he could be served a "notice to appear,"which is normally the first stage of the deportation process.

"Lawyers at the so-called Justice Department made this request to his attorneys within hours of us having asked the court to stop them from doing precisely that," one of Taal's lawyers told the Guardian. "It's very difficult to explain how unprecedented this is.

"This is something that should shock everybody. The most fundamental right in a democracy is the right to seek redress for grievances against the government," Lee added. "God knows where they would send [Taal], simply because he decided to access the federal courts with American citizen colleagues to challenge whether what Trump is doing is legal or not."

The Trump administration has sought to deport various foreign scholars, students and faculty members at educational institutions for their involvement in pro-Palestine protests.