Where things stand in 5 of the Trump administration's highest profile immigration cases

CNN

12-05-2025

Donald Trump
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Over the weekend, an international university student facing deportation by the Trump administration was allowed to return to her home in the US while her case continues to play out in court, marking a victory for one of the many cases involving students who could be removed from the country after participating in pro-Palestinian activism.
Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk spent 45 days in a detention center more than 1,500 miles from that home, accused by federal authorities of participating in pro-terrorist activities. The judge who ordered Öztürk's release emphasized the administration's failure to submit any evidence to support that accusation throughout her lengthy detention.
Öztürk's case is one in a series of arrests targeting international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism that has sparked widespread concerns about free speech on university grounds.
It's been two months since Immigration and Customs Enforcement began targeting students and scholars in often dramatic arrests by masked officers, leaving the international community on edge about their most fundamental rights.
Here's where Öztürk's and four other prominent cases stand.
On March 25, Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, was seized by masked federal agents near her Somerville, Massachusetts, apartment close to the Tufts University campus, where she is a PhD student.
On her way to an Iftar dinner at sunset, Öztürk was surrounded and restrained by six plainclothes officers. Video shows her shriek in fear when an officer in a hooded sweatshirt and hat grabbed her by the wrists. The officers did not show their badges until after she was restrained, the video shows.
Öztürk was arrested a year after co-authoring a campus newspaper op-ed critical of Tufts' response to the Gaza war, which her attorneys argue made her a target of the administration's efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian speech in violation of her constitutional rights.
Transported across multiple states before finally being detained in Louisiana, Öztürk endured more frequent and more severe asthma attacks while in custody, she testified in court Friday.
At a three-hour hearing, US District Judge William K. Sessions III also heard from three other witnesses about Öztürk's community work and her asthma attacks, which her attorneys say were not adequately treated while she was in custody.
The judge found Öztürk had raised 'substantial claims' of due process and First Amendment violations, saying her 'continued detention potentially chills the speech of millions.'
Sessions emphasized that for weeks, the government failed to produce any evidence to support Öztürk's continued detention, except for the year-old op-ed. 'That is literally the case,' the judge said. 'There is no evidence here as to the motivation absent the consideration of the op-ed.'
Now back in Massachusetts, Öztürk remains hopeful as she resumes her studies while continuing her legal fight.
'America is the greatest democracy in the world, and I believe in those values that we share. I have faith in the American system of justice,' Öztürk said at a news conference at the airport.
The decision to release Öztürk came on the same day that a federal court rejected the Trump administration's attempt to re-arrest another international student who was detained last month.
Moshen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old student and prominent activist at Columbia University, spent more than two weeks in detention before he was freed on bond on April 30.
In pushing for Mahdawi's deportation, the Trump administration has argued that his activism undermines its foreign policy goals. The federal judge who ordered Mahdawi's release found that the Columbia student has presented a 'substantial claim' that his arrest was an attempt to suppress dissenting speech.
Mahdawi is Palestinian, born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank. He moved to the US in 2014 and became a permanent resident.
He was in an interview to finalize his US citizenship when federal authorities took him into custody on April 14, in what Mahdawi has described as 'a setup.'
Mahdawi credited his legal team's swift action – and good timing – for limiting his time in detention. Federal authorities tried to put him on a plane to Louisiana, similar to Öztürk, but they 'just missed the airplane … by nine minutes,' he told a crowd of supporters after his release last month.
He also vowed to maintain his activism, telling supporters, 'Where (do) we go from this? We have to mobilize. We have to organize.'
Last week Mahdawi helped launch a $1 million fundraising campaign to bolster a legal safety net for immigrants in Vermont, where his legal case is continuing, the Associated Press reported.
Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and Georgetown University doctoral fellow specializing in peacebuilding in the Middle East, has been in federal detention for nearly two months after his J-1 visa was abruptly revoked.
According to his legal team, immigration officers arrived at his home on March 17 wearing black masks and 'brandishing weapons,' in what one of his attorneys called 'every family's worst nightmare.'
About two days after the arrest, the Department of Homeland Security accused Khan Suri of 'actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,' and having 'close connections to a known or suspected terrorist.' As in Mahdawi's and similar cases, the Trump administration cited a perceived threat to the nation's foreign policy goals as the reason for his visa being revoked.
Khan Suri's attorneys argue the accusations stem from the public support his Palestinian wife, who is a US citizen, has expressed for Gaza during the war with Israel. His father-in-law is a former adviser to Hamas leadership, but Khan Suri's legal team rejects the administration's accusation that this constitutes a 'close tie to a known and suspected terrorist.'
Legal filings in Khan Suri's case describe bleak detention conditions. His attorneys said he was being housed 'in a crowded unit, sleeping on the floor' and was given no religious accommodations for Ramadan in March.
The prolonged detention has also disrupted his academic career. Khan Suri's scholarship, research and teaching position at Georgetown have all been 'indefinitely suspended,' according to his bond motion, though the university has indicated he could resume his position if his visa is restored.
On Wednesday, a federal judge will consider Khan Suri's request to be released on bond during a hearing in Virginia.
Harvard Medical School researcher Kseniia Petrova, a Russian national, describes herself as a 'nerdy 30-year-old scientist' who 'only want(s) to be in the lab.' The Department of Homeland Security accuses her of lying to federal officials and deliberately trying to smuggle frog embryo samples into the US from Paris.
She's been in an ICE detention center in Louisiana for nearly three months.
In a statement this month, Petrova admitted that she failed to review US customs protocols but said she believed the embryos – 'non-toxic, non-hazardous and non-infectious' – would not cause issues.
She insists she 'never provided false information to any government official' but rather that 'some of my words were misunderstood and inaccurately reflected in the statement that the officer presented for my signature.' Petrova claims her requests to correct the statement were ignored.
'I take full responsibility for not properly declaring the frog embryo samples,' Petrova said. 'What I do not understand is why the American officials say I am a danger to the community and a flight risk.'
DHS defended Petrova's detention in a statement last month that mocks sympathetic media coverage of those targeted in the administration's immigration efforts. The statement says messages were found on Petrova's phone that 'revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.'
Petrova's case appears to reflect the Trump administration's systematic approach of using minor offenses as a basis for deportation. The targeting of a highly skilled scientific research also highlights what critics say the US stands to lose in Trump's crackdown.
'She has made herself crucial to pretty much every project that's going on in the lab. I don't know how we're gonna continue without her,' a principal research scientist at Harvard's Department of Systems Biology said of Petrova.
Petrova's detention has drawn support from colleagues, who have sent her science books and letters of encouragement, with some visiting her in Louisiana.
A court hearing in Vermont later this month could determine whether Petrova will be released – or deported to Russia, where she risks arrest for her opposition to the war in Ukraine, her attorney says.
Born a Palestinian refugee in Syria, Columbia University graduate and US permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil emerged in early March as the face of the Trump administration's crackdown on campus activism by international students.
Khalil, who played a prominent role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last summer, was arrested near his on-campus home – where he lived with his then-pregnant wife – on March 8 after being accused of engaging in activities in support of Hamas.
Khalil, 30, is being held in an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles from his family. Last month he was denied permission to attend the birth of first child in person, according to emails reviewed by CNN.
An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled in April that Khalil is subject to removal from the US, but his attorneys are appealing that and challenging his detention in a separate federal case in New Jersey that argues he is being targeted for constitutionally protected free speech.
Last week a judge in the New Jersey case asked the Trump administration to give examples of previous instances when the government deported people deemed to be a threat to US foreign policy.
President Trump called Khalil's detention in March 'the first arrest of many to come.' How the Palestinian activist's legal case plays out could have major implications for those detained after him.
CNN's Gloria Pazmino, Rebekah Riess, Dalia Faheid, Polo Sandoval, Kaanita Iyer, Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Aishwarya S Iyer, Chris Boyette, Lauren del Valle, Jeff Winter, Amanda Musa, Ray Sanchez and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.