WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Congressman Jerry Nadler (NY-12) issued the following statement: 

"I am appalled by the Trump Administration's repeated pattern of targeting students for exercising their fundamental First Amendment rights—targeting them for deportation on that basis. Once again, it is a Columbia student, this time Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident, who is being targeted to silence dissent and suppress free speech. Another student, Momodou Taal, who is enrolled at Cornell, has similarly been ordered to surrender to ICE. Regardless of any opinions on the content of the speech these students have exercised, their arrest is not a matter of genuine national security concerns, but rather a direct assault on the very freedoms that define our country.

"Yunseo, who has lived in this country since she was seven years old, is being targeted not for any legitimate criminal wrongdoing, but for her participation in a protest. No matter how anyone, including the President of the United States, feels about their speech, these actions are protected by the Constitution. Yet, the Trump administration has deployed immigration officials to detain and deport her solely for her political views. This is an abuse of power that mirrors the darkest chapters of our history, in which dissidents were persecuted for speaking out against the government.

"Let’s be clear: there is no credible legal justification for this. It is a transparent attempt to punish those whose exercise of free speech is contrary to the administration's foreign policy agenda, and part of Trump’s greater attempt to control higher education in America, similar to his effort to strong-arm universities like Columbia to fall in line with the MAGA agenda—or face financial ruin.

"Deporting Yunseo will do nothing to make Jewish students safer on campus. Fully funding the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—the office charged with fighting antisemitism on college campuses—would make Jewish students safer. However, in his reckless attempt to close the Department of Education, Trump has shuttered the OCR’s New York office and six others, crippling the only enforcement mechanism available to Jewish students. Arresting students and chilling their free speech is no solution to the problem of the Trump administration’s making.

"I stand strongly in support of everyone’s right to free speech as protected in the Constitution. We cannot fall in line with Trump’s suppression of free speech."

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