NEW YORK (Dispatches) – New York City’s police department provided federal immigration authorities with an internal record about a Palestinian woman who they arrested at a protest, which the Trump administration is now using as evidence in its bid to deport her, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The report — shared by the NYPD in March — includes a summary of information in the department’s files about Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who was arrested at a protest outside Columbia University last spring. It lists her home address, date of birth and an officer’s two-sentence account of the arrest.
Its distribution to federal authorities offers a glimpse into behind-the-scenes cooperation between the NYPD and the Trump administration, and raises questions about the city’s compliance with sanctuary laws that prohibit police from assisting with immigration enforcement efforts.
Kordia, 32, was among the earliest people jailed in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on noncitizens who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
She was detained during a voluntary check-in with immigration officials in Newark, New Jersey, on March 13, then flown to an immigration jail in Texas. Her arrest was announced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security the next day in a statement that cited an expired visa and her role in “pro-Hamas protests.”
It remains unclear how immigration authorities were able to learn about Kordia’s presence at the protest near Columbia last April.
Amid escalating tensions on the campus of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, six students have been suspended without due process for setting up a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Swarthmore’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) said in a statement on Friday that the students were told to evacuate from campus.
Of the six students who were suspended, four were people of color, and three were first-generation, low-income students, the statement said.
“This is part of a disturbing trend of Swarthmore exploiting the vulnerabilities of student protesters on the basis of racialized discrimination,” it added.
The students on interim suspension are banned from attending college events or stepping foot on campus
According to SJP, this is the first time the college has suspended students for protesting since at least the 1960s.
Swarthmore College’s president, Valerie Smith, claimed in a statement on Thursday the suspended students had vandalized campus property.