Federal officials had misrepresented themselves to gain access, according to the university. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said President Trump had told him the student would be let go.
- Sharon Otterman/ New York Times
NEW YORK (TIP): Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered a residential building owned by Columbia University early Thursday morning and detained an undergraduate student. The school said in a letter to the campus that the agents had conducted the operation under false pretenses.
Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said in the letter that the immigration officers appeared to gain access by saying that they were searching for a “missing person.” A state assemblyman said that he had been told by university officials that the federal agents presented themselves as Police Department officers to convince a building superintendent to let them in.
The case quickly escalated to the highest political levels. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had brought up the student’s detention during a meeting with President Trump in Washington on Thursday. Just after 3 p.m., Mr. Mamdani said on social media that President Trump had informed him that the student would “be released imminently.”
The student, Elmina Aghayeva, posted on Instagram at about 3:45 p.m. that she had been released. “The university is relieved and thrilled that our student, Ellie, has been released from detainment,” Columbia posted on social media shortly afterward.
Earlier Thursday, federal officials had confirmed the arrest of the student by ICE agents in a statement.
“ICE arrested Elmina Aghayeva, an illegal alien from Azerbaijan, whose student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes,” the statement from the parent agency of ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, said. “The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment. She has no pending appeals or applications with D.H.S.”
Friends of Ms. Aghayeva identified her by a slightly different first name, Ellie, and said that she was a senior in the university’s School of General Studies, majoring in neuroscience and political science. They said that she had been taken from her Columbia-owned apartment on West 121st Street, according to a statement her friends released to a faculty organization, the American Association of University Professors.
To call attention to her arrest, Ms. Aghayeva posted a photo on her Instagram story Thursday morning showing her in the back of a vehicle with the caption: “Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.” She has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Her arrest punctured months of relative calm on Columbia’s campus and appeared to be the first incursion by immigration police into a university building in nearly a year. Mahmoud Khalil, who had finished his coursework at Columbia and was about to graduate, was detained in the lobby of his university-owned apartment building in March 2025.
Ms. Shipman said that Ms. Aghayeva’s arrest had taken place at about 6:30 a.m. and that the university was working to reach her family and provide legal support. Court documents show that a lawyer for Ms. Aghayeva filed an emergency petition in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, requesting her release from detention.
Ms. Aghayeva, 29, appears to have been in the country since at least 2016. She lived in Connecticut and North Carolina before moving to New York City to attend Columbia, according to public information available about her. The School of General Studies enrolls nontraditional students, who are often older than typical undergraduates.
In 2020, she married Garrett Blackburn, an American citizen who lives in North Carolina. But the couple separated four years ago and are not in regular contact, he said in a brief interview.
Columbia requires that law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant to access private areas on its campus, including housing facilities and classrooms. It appeared that a judicial warrant was not used in this case, according to Columbia.
Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Democrat who represents Upper Manhattan, said that university officials had told him that the agents arrived at the building in plain clothes and presented themselves as Police Department officers. University officials told Mr. Lasher, he said, that the officers had been let in by a building superintendent after they showed him a poster or flyer for a missing child.
A roommate opened the door to Ms. Aghayeva’s apartment. Once the superintendent realized that the visit was not about a missing person, he called campus security officials, who then called the Police Department, Mr. Lasher said.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president, said in a social media post that the ICE agents had shown a phony missing-person’s bulletin for a 5-year-old girl, and that they had fake badges.
“They purposefully deceived campus housing/security to gain entry to the student’s apartment,” he said. “The level of civil rights violations that took place is staggering.”
Julie Menin, the speaker of the City Council, said that she had been briefed on the detention, and had issued a joint statement condemning the action with Shaun Abreu, the council member representing the district that includes Columbia.
“ICE has no place in our schools and universities,” they wrote. “These activities do not make our city or country safer but rather drive mistrust and danger.”
Mr. Khalil, who had a green card, was released from detention on bail, but is still fighting deportation. In April 2025, another Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, was detained when he showed up for a citizenship interview in Vermont. An immigration judge last week blocked his deportation.
A Columbia student from India, Ranjani Srinivasan, fled to Canada last March after federal officers showed up at her university apartment building searching for her. Immigration officials also searched university housing for another student, Yunseo Chung, last March.
Columbia announced that it was taking additional steps to protect students from immigration police. In a nonemergency situation, building staff members can no longer let in law enforcement officers without the presence of the university’s public safety employees and guidance from its legal office.
On Thursday afternoon, about 200 people gathered on the sidewalk outside of the Columbia gates on Broadway to protest Ms. Aghayeva’s detention. They held signs that said, “Abolish ICE” and “Immigrants Are New York.”
A sign with a picture of Liam Conejo Ramos, a child who was detained by immigration agents in Minneapolis while carrying a Spider-Man backpack, was raised in the air on a stick.
Delfina Roybal, 29, a senior at Columbia and classmate of Ms. Aghayeva, said that she had done impressive research at the university and was completing her program there.
“I know she was finishing up soon, so it’s just absolutely weird to walk around knowing that she’s somewhere in a cell,” Ms. Roybal said.
(Source: New York Times)
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