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President Donald Trump listens as Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, Monday, March 24, 2025 (Pool via AP).
A Columbia University student who is currently being chased down by the Trump administration has filed a lawsuit that aims to undercut the government’s ongoing search and apparent concomitant efforts to deport her.
Yunseo Chung is a lawful permanent resident who has lived in the United States since she was 7 years old, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday. Though technically a Korean national, the U.S. is “the only country she has ever known,” the 48-page lawsuit explains.
The 21-year-old junior has a 3.99 GPA and is highly engaged in various extracurricular activities, the lawsuit notes. Before that, Chung was her high school’s valedictorian. But the plaintiff’s academic achievements have seemingly been overshadowed by her participation in protests related to the Israel-Hamas war, the lawsuit says.
“Since 2023, along with hundreds of her peers, Ms. Chung has also participated in some student protests and demonstrations on Columbia University’s campus related to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the devastating toll it has taken on Palestinian civilians,” the lawsuit reads. “Ms. Chung has not made public statements to the press or otherwise assumed a high-profile role in these protests. She was, rather, one of a large group of college students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns.”
To hear Chung and her attorneys tell it, those low-profile rallying efforts have made her a marked woman in the Trump administration’s eyes — and, in turn, prompted government agents up and down the line to initiate a carbon copy of the process that resulted in fellow Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil’s administrative detention in a Louisiana lockup without charges.
On or around March 8, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its offshoot Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “began a series of unlawful efforts to arrest, detain, and remove Ms. Chung from the country because of her protected speech,” the lawsuit says.
While Chung seems to have evaded detention so far, on March 10, one of her attorneys fielded law enforcement requests and took note of increasingly aggressive efforts to search for and detain her.
The lawsuit explains, at length:
AUSA [Perry] Carbone stated that the Secretary of State had revoked Ms. Chung’s visa. Attorney [Naz] Ahmad explained that Ms. Chung is a U.S. permanent resident, and that she is not present in the United States on a visa.
AUSA Carbone then stated that “the Secretary of State has revoked that,” too. Counsel for Ms. Chung offered that the Secretary of State does not have the unilateral authority to revoke permanent resident status. When Attorney Ahmad inquired further, AUSA Carbone could not explain the justification for the government’s purported action.
Later that same day, AUSA Carbone texted Attorney Ahmad a copy of an administrative arrest warrant naming Ms. Chung. The administrative arrest warrant did not specify under which provision of the immigration law Ms. Chung would be subject to deportation.
Her lawyers, on the other hand, say the warrants were based on “false pretenses” and meant to arrest her because of the viewpoint of her protest activities.
“The government’s retaliation against Ms. Chung comes in a broader context of retaliation against other noncitizens who have exercised their First Amendment rights,” the lawsuit reads. “Officials at the highest levels of the federal government have made clear that they intend to use immigration enforcement to punish noncitizens who speak out in support of Palestinians and Palestinian rights, or who are perceived to have engaged in such speech.”
In both formal and germane terms, however, the government is being intentionally evasive about the present case, the complaint alleges.
Neither Chung nor her attorneys have been provided with a specific reason for why the government wants to “presumably” send her to South Korea, according to the lawsuit. Nor, has she actually been presented with an “order of removal,” the lawsuit acknowledges.
Rather, Chung likens her experience so far to Khalil’s and anticipates she will likely, if caught, be subject to similar administrative detention based on a “pattern and practice” by the Trump administration “of targeting individuals associated with protests for Palestinian rights.”
The lawsuit cites Khalil’s controversial case analogously and briefly explains that he eventually received an ICE-issued notice to appear which cites a section of federal law that says: “[a]n alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
Chung now believes she is being subjected to the same “foreign policy ground” and is moving to preempt the government’s would-be actions.
To that end, Chung’s complaint also contains a petition for a writ of habeas corpus — which serves to question the basic premise of the government’s actions in relation to protesters over the war.
The writ of habeas corpus is a 900-year-old legal protection afforded to persons against authoritarian impulses of law enforcement and government executives which allows an advocate to argue someone is being illegally confined, detained or imprisoned. It is generally considered the bedrock of the American and British legal systems.
More to the point, the writ also attempts to force the government to answer questions in court and fully account for its actions by forcing an administrative process — like ICE detention and deportation — into the more public light of a judicial process. In other words, the writ here is being sought to make sure the New York federal court retains authority over Chung’s case instead of ICE and an immigration judge.
Still, neither the plaintiff nor the government are actually confused.
While DHS and ICE have not formally issued a removal order for Chung’s deportation, they have issued a warrant. And, as the complaint notes, both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have promised that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
The lawsuit takes issue with the government’s interpretation of the law and notes that many opponents of the widespread protest movement “mischaracterize peaceful protest and any speech in favor of Palestinian rights as inherently supportive of Hamas.”
So, while the Trump administration believes the stated “foreign policy” ground is the only thing necessary to deport any noncitizen based on its own subjective determination, the plaintiff-undergraduate says this decidedly vague premise is a violation of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and various federal laws — including immigration law.
“The issuance of the administrative arrest warrant, pursuant to the Rubio Determination, is motivated by Ms. Chung’s constitutionally protected past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations,” the lawsuit reads. “The Foreign Policy Ground and its implementation through the Policy, the Rubio Determination, and Defendants-Respondents’ attempts to detain Ms. Chung violate her due process rights under the Fifth Amendment as unconstitutionally vague and violative of Ms. Chung’s substantive and procedural due process rights.”
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Chung’s legal effort is also not entirely unlike a shot across the bow as the government appears intent to replicate the Khalil situation with numerous foreign national students who have taken part in on-campus protests since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which began on Oct. 7 when Hamas-led militants stormed out of Gaza into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage. According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, the majority of them women and children. Authorities in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters when reporting casualties.
“ICE’s shocking actions against Ms. Chung form part of a larger pattern of attempted U.S. government repression of constitutionally protected protest activity and other forms of speech,” the lawsuit goes on. “The government’s repression has focused specifically on university students who speak out in solidarity with Palestinians and who are critical of the Israeli government’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza or the pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. government and other U.S. institutions. Now, officials at the highest echelons of government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike.”
The lawsuit pleads for the SDNY to take jurisdiction over the matter, bar the Trump administration’s “unlawful Policy of targeting noncitizens for removal based on First Amendment protected speech and advocacy for Palestinian rights” in general, bar the efforts targeting Chung in particular, issue an injunction that would specifically prohibit Chung’s detention and removal from the Empire State and the U.S., and a declaratory judgment that the anti-protester immigration offensive is broadly illegal and unconstitutional.
