‘I was stunned and scared:' Columbia University student ran from Homeland Security

CNN

31-03-2025

Ranjani Srinivasan was busy talking to an adviser at Columbia University when the federal agents first came to her door. The day before she'd got an unexpected email that her student visa had been canceled, and she was trying to get information.
'It was my roommate who heard the knock and immediately recognized (it as) law enforcement,' Srinivasan told CNN. 'She asked them 'Do you have a warrant?' And they had to say 'No.''
'I was stunned and scared,' she said. 'I remember telling the adviser 'ICE is at my door and you're telling me I'm fine? Do something.''
They returned another day, also without a warrant, Srinivasan said. Matters escalated when they came a third time, with a judge's permission to enter the Columbia apartment. By then she had already left the country.
The biggest question for Srinivasan is why they came at all.
Srinivasan had renewed her student visa just a few months earlier, being granted permission for another five years in the United States — more than enough time to complete her PhD in urban planning. She was no stranger to immigration rules, having won a Fulbright scholarship to Harvard University for her master's degree and then returning to her native India for the requisite two years after.
Her dream acceptance at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation coincided with the beginning of the Covid pandemic, so she started her studies in Chennai, India, before making it to New York City.
By last month, the end of her doctorate was almost in sight, she was grading papers for the students she was teaching and fretting over a deadline for a journal. Far from her mind was a night almost a year before when she got caught up in a crowd.
That evening in April 2024 she'd been trying to get back to her university apartment from a staff picnic when she was swept up in a police operation against a crowd protesting Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, she said.
I did not mean to deceive anyone … If I made a mistake, I would have been happy to clarify it to the state
Ranjani Srinivasan
Srinivasan had only just returned to the US, having been away from Columbia since before the war began and generated passionate protests. 'We didn't really know what was going to happen that day,' she said. 'The whole perimeter of the neighborhood had been barricaded.' Unable to prove she lived there, she wasn't allowed to go to her street, so she ended up circling the neighborhood, looking for a way through, she told CNN.
'They kept shifting the barricades, and then I think around 200 cops descended, and they kind of charged at us. It was absolute confusion. People were screaming, falling, people were running out of the way,' she said. Too small to force her way through the melee, she ended up in a large group of people detained by the police.
She said she was held with the crowd for several hours but never fingerprinted or booked for an arrest. She was given two pink-colored summonses by the New York Police Department — one for obstructing pedestrian traffic and the other for failure to disperse — before being released. A lawyer working pro bono for a number of the students got the summonses dismissed even before she had to appear in court. That means there should be no record against her, and as far as Srinivasan was concerned, she could forget the whole thing.
She did not report the dismissed summonses on her visa renewal.
When asked why Srinivasan's visa was revoked, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement 'these citations were not disclosed.'
That was never mentioned to Srinivasan when she was told her visa had been taken away.
'I did not mean to deceive anyone,' she said. 'If I made a mistake, I would have been happy to clarify it to the state.'
But she was never given the chance.
According to local so-called sanctuary laws, federal authorities should not have even known Srinivasan had ever been detained, according to her lawyer, Nathan Yaffe.
'New York City is supposed to have protections in place to prevent people who don't commit crimes, who haven't been in any kind of trouble, from getting caught in this sort of punitive dragnet that the administration is implementing here,' he said.
'But clearly the federal government has access to the summons database or to other data that allows them to see even when people aren't fingerprinted, even when people don't have any criminal case, even when the only allegation against them is entirely dismissed.'
It was very clear to her, rightly so, that this government would stop at nothing to pursue her, even though their pursuit of her was based on nothing
Nathan Yaffe, Srinivasan's lawyer
No one from DHS, the NYPD or Columbia University responded to CNN requests about how federal authorities became aware of this case. When asked about Srinivasan by CNN at a news conference, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said: 'I'll say it over and over again: New York City Police Department, they do not collaborate for civil enforcement.' He said he would look into it but his office has not got back to CNN.
For Srinivasan, the sudden escalation was alarming. She says she had attended protests in her time in the US, but as much to experience American culture as to exercise free speech.
But she was seeing others being detained under orders from the Trump administration and was afraid.
'You keep going back, thinking 'Have I done something?' And there are no answers there,' she said.
She knew Columbia University graduate student and US permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and put in detention in Louisiana, and did not want to take that risk.
'It was very clear to her, rightly so, that this government would stop at nothing to pursue her, even though their pursuit of her was based on nothing,' Yaffe said.
Srinivasan went to LaGuardia Airport and took a flight to Canada.
Government officers, now in possession of a warrant, went back to her apartment.
Four agents, three with their faces covered, spent several minutes inside.
They asked Srinivasan's roommate to stay in her room. 'If not, you can leave,' one agent said, as heard on a video recording taken by the roommate that CNN has viewed.
Another said he would explain the warrant 'if you would like to put down your phone.'
I'm glad to see one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self deport
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security on X
'We have a warrant to search this premises for electronics, documents related to Ranjani Srinivasan,' continued the officer who identified himself as coming from 'Homeland Security' as the roommate recorded. 'Did you get enough video?' he added.
The officers left, taking nothing for evidence.
A DHS news release heralded Srinivasan's departure but did not mention unreported summonses, instead alleging she was 'involved in activities supporting Hamas.' The release was headlined: 'Columbia University Student Whose Visa Was Revoked for Supporting Hamas and Terrorist Activities Used CBP Home App to Self-Deport.' The app, introduced the day before Srinivasan left, includes a feature for immigrants without legal permission to be in the US to inform the government they intend to depart.
There was also a damning post on X from Secretary Kristi Noem: 'It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live & study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked and you should not be in this country. I'm glad to see one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self deport.'
Yaffe said the statements about Srinivasan were 'absolutely false.'
'She has basically been a private person, pursuing her studies and pursuing her career,' he said. 'She's been a student, and they not only took that away from her in the sense of forcing her out of the country … but they also took away her privacy, obviously, and made her the huge public face of this campaign of repression that they're undertaking with the deliberate desire, as the administration has said, to send a message to other students.'
Srinivasan also takes issue with how she was portrayed. She denies using the CBP Home app, saying it wasn't on her phone and anyway her device was almost dead at the airport. 'I didn't even know the app existed. I just left,' she said.
As for her politics, she said: 'I'm not a terrorist sympathizer, I'm not a pro-Hamas activist. I'm just literally a random student … It just seems very strange that they would spend so much, vast resources, in persecuting me.'
For now, she's trying to stay optimistic about getting back to her life and doctorate. She was due to complete it in May. She hopes somehow Columbia can reenroll her so her five years of study with them is not for naught.
But she's unhappy with the actions of the Ivy League school, which has made policy changes apparently to address demands from the Trump administration since she left. The interim president of Columbia University stepped down the following week.
'I do think that Columbia should have protected me against this. I think that that's part of their mandate,' Srinivasan said. 'When you're attracting these international students to come and study at Columbia, when you go and do outreach all across the world to attract the best and the brightest, you have a mandate to protect them.'
She might be an expert in planning, but Srinivasan is not trying to look too far ahead and is set on two goals.
'I want my PhD. I want my name cleared.'