Report: ICE Impersonated NYPD To Arrest Columbia University Student

Immigration officers in New York City have been accused of impersonating officers with the NYPD in order to gain entry into a Columbia University-owned apartment building to detain a student, and the Trump administration is, as usual, sticking to its script, demonizing the detainee and absolving its agents of any wrongdoing.

According to the New York Times, on Thursday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 29-year-old Columbia University student Ellie Aghayeva. Hours later, Aghayeva was released from custody, but before we get into all of that, we have to talk about the way the federal agents allegedly got into the university-owned apartment building where they apprehended their target in the first place, according to her attorneys and the university’s president, Claire Shipman.

From the Times:

The officers falsely told the building superintendent that they were from the Police Department and said that they were searching for a missing child. The superintendent let the officers in, Ms. Shipman said.

At the apartment door of the student, Ellie Aghayeva, 29, the officers repeated the same story to gain entry. “Our security cameras captured the agents in the hallway showing pictures of the alleged missing child,” Ms. Shipman said.

Once the agents entered the apartment, it was clear that they had misrepresented themselves. A public security officer arrived and asked for a warrant, which was not produced, Ms. Shipman said. They refused to give the officer time to call his supervisor, and they then took the student, she said, calling the situation “utterly unacceptable.”

Welp — at least this time they’re using imaginary children to lure detainees out instead of real children.

Seriously, though, there’s a reason the Trump administration recently shut down a database that tracked the misconduct and lawlessness of federal agents. There’s also a reason the administration is filing lawsuits against state governments: local officials won’t allow agents to make arrests wherever they want, completely unrestricted. This administration doesn’t want accountability for its agents or any guardrails prohibiting them from subverting local laws. President Donald Trump and his minions don’t care about constitutional protection or human dignity — and they damn sure don’t care about warrants.

In fact, the federal government has been told numerous times by judges that its agents can’t arrest people or force their way into buildings and homes without a judge’s warrant, and it just keeps coming up with new ways to get around the law.

And suffice it to say, it is illegal for civilians to impersonate police officers, and it should be illegal for ICE agents to do it as well. Of course, the Department of Homeland Security appears to be denying the allegations.

According to the Times, DHS said Aghayeva was arrested because her “student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes,” and that its officers had “verbally identified themselves and wore badges around their necks” when “the building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment.”

DHS also made sure to refer to Aghayeva as an “illegal alien,” because, otherwise, people might forget that the administration has claimed ad nauseam that its mass deportation crackdown is about going after the “worst of the worst” in “criminal illegal aliens,” despite mostly arresting non-criminals, many of whom are only accused of overstaying their visas.

Anyway, let’s get into why Aghayeva was released hours after her arrest, because, apparently, she has NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani to thank, as well as those who alerted him to what was going on.

More from the Times:

At about 10 a.m., Ms. Shipman put out an urgent letter to the campus about the arrest. It sounded the alarm. A wide range of New York elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, publicly criticized the incursion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into a college setting under false pretenses and demanded the student’s release.

“No one should disappear at the hands of the government,” Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said in her statement. “No student should be taken from their dorm through deception. These incidents demand an independent investigation and real accountability. New York will not look the other way.”

As chance would have it, Mr. Mamdani was headed to Washington for a previously scheduled meeting with Mr. Trump to pitch him on a real estate project. There, the mayor spoke up.

“I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning,” Mr. Mamdani said, describing his conversation with Mr. Trump in a social media post.

Just after 3 p.m., the White House called with a reply. “He has just informed me that she will be released imminently,” Mr. Mamdani wrote.

Court documents show that a lawyer for Aghayeva filed an emergency petition in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, requesting her release from detention. Aghayeva posted on Instagram at about 3:45 p.m. the same day that she had been released, saying, “I am so grateful for every one of you.”

“The university is relieved and thrilled that our student, Ellie, has been released from detainment,” Columbia posted on social media shortly afterward.

It’s worth noting that, in March of last year, Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and detained by ICE because, according to the White House, Khalil is a “Hamas supporter” who organized an “unauthorized marching event” and made social media posts in support of Palestine. Khalil, a green card-holding permanent resident of the United States, wasn’t formally charged with a crime, and, in June, a federal judge barred the Trump administration from seeking his continued detention and deportation without granting him due process. By all accounts, including the government’s, the administration wanted to deport Khalil just for engaging in protests it didn’t agree with.

Similar to how Aghayeva was arrested, agents showed up at Khalil’s home at a Columbia University-owned apartment complex, where they arrested him, which they did after threatening to arrest his wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, according to his attorney, Amy Greer.

The federal government and its rogue agents aren’t regularly being compared to the Gestapo for no reason. How much more evidence do we need that ICE deserves every bit of the backlash it regularly receives?

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