U.S. immigration agents have arrested a second student who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York City last year.
In a statement on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security identified the person as Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student from the West Bank, saying she was arrested in Newark a day earlier.
According to the statement, Kordia’s student visa was terminated in January 2022, and she was detained for deportation.
Meanwhile, another student, identified as Ranjani Srinivasan from India, had her student visa revoked for allegedly supporting the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Friday that Washington will revoke visas of more students in the coming days.
“In the days to come, you should expect more visas will be revoked as we identify people that we should have never allowed in,” he said after a meeting of G7 foreign ministers.
The developments came less than a week after federal immigration agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Khalil, a Palestinian student-activist, arrived in the United States on a student visa in 2022 and obtained his green card last year. However, the Trump administration says it intends to strip him of his green card.
Washington has repeatedly accused participants in protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza of anti-Semitism and supporting terrorism. U.S. President Donald Trump alleged that Khalil is a “radical foreign pro-Hamas student,” vowing that his detention was “the first of many to come.”
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