U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a Columbia University student by entering campus housing without a judicial warrant, misleading security by claiming to search for a missing child. An investigation reveals Columbia repeatedly failed to follow its own policies requiring judicial warrants for law enforcement access, despite explicit rules barring ICE from non-public property.
The article details multiple incidents where international students were targeted, indicating a systemic failure by university staff to demand proper documentation. Critics within the Columbia community contrast this lapse with the university's investment in policing campus protests, suggesting misplaced institutional priorities.
The main topics covered are the warrantless ICE arrest, Columbia University's failure to enforce its own protective policies, and the perceived institutional hypocrisy in prioritizing protest policing over student protection from immigration authorities.
After Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva, a neuroscience student, was taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from Columbia University housing, a story about ICE’s villainy quickly took hold. During the arrest, the school administration said, federal agents got into the building without a judicial warrant by telling a security guard that they were searching for a missing child.
In publicizing the account, however, the university downplayed Columbia’s own role in Aghayeva’s arrest, an echo of several other incidents over the past year where international students were targeted by federal agents.
Columbia, according to an investigation by The Intercept, repeatedly failed to follow its own policies for safeguarding students from President Donald Trump’s deportation machine.
The school has long required that authorities — whether federal or local — present a judicial warrant to gain entry to school grounds. Yet a review of university documents and interviews with affected students show how, in Aghayeva’s and other cases, school staff and officials failed to demand the proper documentation.
Since at least March 5, 2025, when provost Angela Olinto emailed school deans about it, Columbia’s explicit policy has been to bar ICE agents from non-public school property. Yet, in the days following the email, federal immigration agents entered school residential buildings without a warrant at least twice.
“After what happened in Minnesota, we know that ICE is coming to our communities. It’s not surprising that they would be coming after Columbia and students,” Eli Northrup, a New York state assembly candidate whose district would include Columbia, said of ICE. “What is surprising is that every single person working in a Columbia building didn’t have it ingrained that if law enforcement comes, that’s something that needs to be thoroughly vetted.”
Members of the Columbia community, including students who have been detained by ICE, said that despite its clear policies the school has shown that it placed its priorities on matters other than defending people from immigration authorities. They pointed to the involvement of officers from Columbia’s Department of Public Safety in cracking down on campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student and protest leader who was arrested inside a Columbia residential building last March by immigration agents, said, “Columbia invested more in training Public Safety how to brutalize students, how to arrest them, rather than how to protect them.”
In response to questions, Columbia pointed The Intercept to its public statements on Aghayeva’s arrest. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not respond to requests for comment.
Aghayeva’s Arrest
Last week, shortly after ICE agents arrived to arrest Aghayeva, who is Azerbaijani, acting Columbia president Claire Shipman wrote an email to the school community.
“It is important to reiterate that all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the University,” she said.
Later, after the student had been released from custody, Shipman said in a video statement that the five ICE agents did not present “any kind of warrant” and misrepresented their identities to enter the building by saying “they were police searching for a missing child.” The following day, Shipman told a university plenary that ICE was let into the property by a Columbia building attendant. Later, a university security officer arrived and asked for a warrant, Shipman said. The federal agents ignored the request.
Concerned students and faculty members questioned how such a major lapse could take place close to a year after similar lapses resulted in Columbia students being targeted by warrantless federal agents on university property.
“It was clear that this individual didn’t know what he was supposed to do,” said a professor of psychology at Columbia, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the university.
In the aftermath of Aghayeva’s arrest, Columbia announced that it will be conducting webinars for its students, faculty, and staff on “immigration policy and understanding the law.”
Given the lapses that have occurred, however, calls are growing for Columbia to train its own security personnel to do better.
Words Versus Actions
“ICE agents must have a judicial warrant or subpoena to access non-public areas,” said the March 2025 email to school deans from Olinto, the provost.
Just two days after the email was sent, on March 7, building door staff at a Columbia building allowed federal agents without a warrant to enter a university property.
“I called Public Safety the moment ICE was outside my house,” said Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian PhD student and the target of the raid. “They said that they’ll file a report and told me not to open the door. And that was it.”
The incursion had come amid a battle between the Trump administration and the university over $400 million in federal funding, which the government suspended on the same day as the raid.
It was also on the same day that Khalil wrote to university authorities about the danger of ICE coming to his home. Khalil, who had been a lead negotiator for the campus protest encampments, had attracted the ire of campus pro-Israel activists, whom he said were trying to get him arrested by ICE.
“I haven’t been able to sleep,” Khalil wrote in an email at the time, “fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”
The university was not forthcoming with any help. The following night, Khalil was arrested by federal immigration agents from inside his university residential building. No warrant had been provided — and no beefed-up security was present.
The day after Khalil was arrested, Columbia published a brief statement that said, “There have been reports of ICE around campus. Columbia has and will continue to follow the law.”
The statement cited the university policy requiring agents to have a judicial warrant to enter non-public areas but gave no indication that authorities in the previous days twice earlier entered buildings without the warrants.
Double Standards
The university’s response to Aghayeva’s arrest stood in stark contrast to how it reacted to the detention and targeting of other Columbia students: Khalil, fellow Palestinian student protester Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung, a U.S. permanent resident who the Trump administration targeted after her arrest at a protest. The Trump administration pursued the three students for their pro-Palestine advocacy, according to court documents.
Following Aghayeva’s arrest, Columbia promptly notified the community and announced that additional Public Safety patrols were being deployed to its residential buildings. Shipman quickly released a statement that said, “We started work immediately to gain her release. We are so grateful for the help and support we got from the mayor and the governor.”
“[I was] happy that such help is being extended to a community member as it should have been extended to me and to others,” said Khalil. “Yet, I couldn’t ignore the discrepancy in that response and how all of these were denied to me. Until this time, Columbia hasn’t reached out to me personally to offer any kind of support.”
Mahdawi’s arrest came after the school criticized a pro-Palestine event he had been involved in. The school initially said the demonstration included “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” Eventually, the administration said the characterization was misleading, but no clarification was issued. When the authorities came after Mahdawi, they cited the language as grounds for his arrest.
“When speech concerns Palestine, protections suddenly weaken, enforcement intensifies, and silence from leadership grows louder,” Mahdawi told The Intercept.
While the failure to stop federal agents with judicial warrants was a shortcoming of public safety, school security officials have not shied away from robust crackdowns on pro-Palestine protests.
“I believe that all of the securitization of campus exists to police the students,” said Srinivasan, the Indian PhD student targeted by ICE. “It does not actually exist to protect the students from ICE.”
On Friday, Columbia announced enhanced security measures including additional personnel around residence buildings, expanded video intercom systems, and distribution of “know your rights” printouts. The university also said that its personnel at housing buildings had received additional trainings over the past week.
It took a year, repeated security failures, and the arrest of a student unrelated to the pro-Palestine protests in any way for the measures to be announced.
People advocating for students, however, noted that Columbia already barred warrantless entry into university buildings.
“It has to be more than a policy,” said Northrup, the state assembly candidate. “It has to be executed.”
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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