A student at Columbia University was detained Thursday morning by federal immigration officers.
Columbia University President Claire Shipman said that “federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person.’” The school’s campus has been closed to outsiders since 2024.
The president did not name the student, but it has been confirmed to be Ellie Aghayeva, an undergraduate neuroscience student who was expected to graduate this year. She was taken from her dorm room at the school’s New York City campus at 6:30 am.
They wouldn’t, but the article says
If true, that is likely a crime.
The whole situation is a crime. But impersonating a police officer should at least get the NYPD to do something. Don’t want ICE besmirching their good name do we?
ACAB
I swear to the gods if the cops start fighting with ice and someone makes the LOTR “side by side with a “ joke about it I’m gonna have an aneurism
Tbh I would also expect Columbia to lie about this for them. There’s a pretty good chance they knew it was ICE and they decided to go with plausible deniability
I would be surprised if it is.
Some federal agents get temporarily deputized as local law enforcement in the areas they operate in (and vice-versa).
It’s not illegal for law enforcement to lie.
Between 1 and 2, I’d be amazed if anything criminal could be charged here.
-Ex-cop
I think 1 is unlikely because it’s NYPD and ICE. 2 is true broadly because there isn’t a law forbidding it in general, but there is a law against lying about being a public servant.
I don’t think there will be charges here, but I think a very ambitious prosecutor could bring charges. They might even find a jury mad enough to make them stick.
I don’t know where you got that opinion from. Such things are truly routine for large local and most federal agencies. You don’t hear about it for the same reason you don’t hear people discussing gum chewing techniques; it’s simply mundane and near-universal to them. There’s going to be crossover between ICE and some of the more frequent federal deputizers, i.e. the U.S. Marshalls. I know this because I used to be a cop and plenty of my colleagues would be routinely snatched up and deputized for some quick federal thing, which was treated as an absolute nothing burger by all parties.
Comforting yourself with the idea that your opponent is so overwhelmingly incompetent that there’s no way they could do anything dangerous is such a bad plan.
Frankly, I read the New York statute on the matter the other day and it didn’t give me a clear idea that what they (allegedly) did in this case is illegal. They are “public servants” by the apparent definition New York uses. Will it be argued in court very soon? I surely hope so, and I surely hope they carve out a more explicit ban on this kind of thing.
But as you say, it’s all barely worth discussing because few prosecutors would risk their literal or metaphorical necks going after ICE/NYPD.