Cornell Student Activist Fighting Deportation Has Left US

(Bloomberg) -- A Cornell University graduate student activist targeted by the Trump administration for deportation says he voluntarily left the country after losing a bid to block his removal.

Momodou Taal said in a post on X that he “lost faith that a favorable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs.” Taal, who was prominent in the pro-Palestinian protest movement, was twice suspended by Cornell for disruptive protests. 

Taal is one of several pro-Palestinian students who have been threatened with deportation actions related to their conduct at protests. His departure comes amid a legal fight over the detention of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, whose case has become a symbol of the administration’s crackdown on campus protests.

Following Hamas’s attack on Israel when more than 1,200 were killed sparking the Jewish state’s retaliation, Taal posted on X “Glory to the resistance!”

A judge in Albany, New York, last week refused to block Taal’s deportation while his lawsuit proceeded. Taal dropped the case Tuesday.

“I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted,” Taal, a dual citizen of the UK and Gambia, said in the post. “Weighing up these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms.”

In addition to targeting activist students for deportation, the Trump administration has pressured some of the nation’s top universities to make drastic changes following months of student protests that followed the October 2023 attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. 

On Monday, the administration said it was reviewing federal funding for Harvard University, including more than $8 billion in grants and more than $255 million in contracts, as part of its efforts to combat antisemitism on campuses. The announcement came just weeks after it canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts at Columbia, which subsequently agreed to a list of demands to restore federal funding, including a ban on masks, expanded campus police powers and a review of its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department.

Taal’s suit is one of several that have been filed by college students and faculty who have been targeted for deportation for their participation in campus protests, including a Georgetown University researcher, Badar Khan Suri, and a Columbia student, Yunseo Chung. Unlike Taal, the judges in both of those cases have blocked the administration from removing them while their cases proceed.

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