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Federal agents detained a Columbia University student early Thursday after Department of Homeland Security officers allegedly gained access to a university-owned residence by presenting a fake missing person poster of a 5-year-old. As news broke of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, and her detention, students and community members rallied en masse demanding her release and an end to immigration enforcement on campus. Due to restrictions implemented by the university in response to pro-Palestine protests, the students were unable to protest on campus proper, but instead took to nearby streets.
Aghayeva was released Thursday afternoon, shortly after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani brought up her case during a meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss housing. "For that decision to be quickly flipped is remarkable because it shows the power of opposition, but also how loose and flippant these arrests are, and how maybe unnecessary they are," says Zeteo's Prem Thakker, who has been reporting on the case.
Columbia's active response, including its legal support of Aghayeva, marked a departure from previous high-profile immigration arrests of its students. Mohsen Mahdawi, a former Columbia University student who last year was also detained by DHS, says Aghayeva's arrest in campus housing is a direct result of the university administration's abdication of its responsibility to protect its students. "Columbia University administration did not have the backbone, in fact, to file any lawsuits against the Trump administration for violating basic rights," says Mahdawi. "This is actually what the Trump administration intended to do, which is to fracture liberal institutions and turn the administrations against their students."
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The band condemned the Trump administration for using the song "Let Down" in a post showing victims of violent crimes that federal officials said had been committed by illegal immigrants.
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Thirty-three-year-old Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia will soon mark one year trapped in ICE detention. Kordia, who was born in East Jerusalem, first came to police attention when she was arrested during the 2024 Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University. Those charges were dropped, but Kordia was later detained at routine immigration check-in in New Jersey. Federal immigration officers said her student visa had expired, and sent her to an ICE detention center in North Texas, where she's been incarcerated ever since. Under what she describes as torturous conditions, she suffered her first-ever seizure, which led to a multiday hospitalization. For three days, ICE refused to inform her family and legal team about her status and whereabouts. "She's been a relatively healthy person physically until she was detained … [but] her health is at great risk if she remains in custody," says Kordia's attorney Sarah Sherman-Stokes.
Kordia has lost more than 200 family members to Israel's genocide in Gaza, and a judge has ruled that she cannot be repatriated to Israel because of risk of persecution there, but the U.S. government has refused to release her on bond while her legal battle crawls along. "Leqaa should never have been detained," in the first place, says Sherman-Stokes.
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We speak with Mother Jones voting rights correspondent Ari Berman about the shocking FBI raid on an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia. Federal agents were seeking records related to the 2020 presidential election, which President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won despite his loss to Joe Biden that year. During his efforts to overturn the election results, Trump pressured local officials to "find" him an additional 11,780 votes. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was on the scene Friday despite having no domestic law enforcement authority. The raid comes amid an ongoing federal probe into the 2020 election.
"The fact that they seized 700 boxes of ballots was incredibly disturbing and sets a chilling precedent for how Trump might try to interfere in the 2026 election," says Berman, who ties the raid in Georgia to the administration's pressure on Minnesota to hand over voter rolls. "This is now a multifront, concerted effort to try to interfere in the midterm elections."
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