An immigration enforcement campaign launched by the Trump administration just over a year ago swept up multiple people tied to pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. college campuses, according to federal officials and court records described in a recent Associated Press update. The government’s actions have produced a mix of releases on bond and continued efforts to deport people, with outcomes turning on visa status disputes and ongoing litigation.
Kordia’s release Monday closed out the administration’s detention of the last person described in the campaign’s campus-activism roundup, the AP reported. The government stopped fighting a judge’s repeated orders that she be freed on bond, after detaining her since March 13, 2025, when she was arrested in New Jersey during an immigration check-in, according to the report.
Federal officials had cited Kordia’s role in what they said were “pro-Hamas protests” as part of the reason for detention, the AP said. The report describes her as not well known as an activist, though she had been arrested at a 2024 demonstration outside Columbia University in New York and said the later charges were dismissed. It also says Kordia’s immigration case is still not over: federal officials accuse her of overstaying her student visa after leaving an educational program, while she said she believed she was allowed to remain under a different immigration mechanism she was pursuing.
The AP update also detailed the status of other people who were detained or targeted in the same broader crackdown. Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born legal U.S. resident and pro-Palestinian activist and former graduate student whose wife is a U.S. citizen, was released in June after spending 104 days in detention on a judge’s orders. The report says federal efforts to deport him continue and that in January the government won a significant court ruling. In the latest status described by the AP, the administration says Khalil forfeited his legal standing by participating in Columbia demonstrations that officials characterized as antisemitic and pro-Hamas protests; Khalil’s position is that his support for Palestinian human rights is not antisemitism and does not amount to support for Hamas, the report says.
Badar Khan Suri, an India-born Georgetown University scholar and husband of a U.S. citizen, was arrested in March 2025 outside his Virginia home shortly after teaching a weekly class on minority rights, the AP reported. The update says federal officials detained him over familial ties to Gaza and accusations that he spread Hamas propaganda, while his account is that he supported Palestinians but not Hamas. The report adds that his father-in-law had worked with the Hamas-run Gaza government, and that his lawyers said he barely knew his father-in-law. The AP said Suri was released on bond in May and that a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, heard arguments Tuesday regarding his bond.
The AP also described federal detention and subsequent court outcomes for other students and scholars. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey, was detained in March 2025 as she left her suburban Boston home and the report said she was on her way to meet friends during Ramadan. The State Department said her visa had been revoked for reasons including a student newspaper op-ed she co-authored; the op-ed criticized Tufts’s response to student activists demanding that the university “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest from companies with ties to Israel. According to the AP update, Öztürk was released in May, and a judge ruled in December that she could return to teaching and to research on children’s relationship to social media.
For Yunseo Chung, the AP reported that federal agents searched a Columbia dorm and her family home after she was arrested at a March 2025 sit-in at neighboring Barnard College over the expulsion of students involved in pro-Palestinian activism. The report said agents did not find her and that a judge soon ordered immigration agents not to detain her while she fought deportation, a legal fight the AP said continues.
In another case, Mohammed Hoque, a Bangladeshi student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, was arrested outside his home in March 2025 while on a student visa and pursuing a degree in management information systems. The AP said Hoque maintained he was targeted because of pro-Palestinian social media posts, while federal officials pointed to a 2023 misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction, and that his case was resolved with probation. The report says Hoque was released in May on $7,500 bond after an immigration court and then a federal judge ordered the government to let him go while his case played out.
Finally, the AP update described Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian who had legal permanent residency in the U.S. for a decade and who was a student leader of protests at Columbia in 2024. The report said he was arrested about a year later at a citizenship interview at an immigration office in Vermont and was freed a few weeks later, after which he helped launch an immigrant legal aid initiative and walked in his Columbia graduation. It added that last month an immigration judge blocked the government from deporting him.