The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Ranjani Srinivasan, the PhD student of Columbia University who self-deported herself fearing ICE arrest, did not disclose during her visa renewal last year that she received two court summonses regarding her involvement in pro-Palestine protests on the university campus.
Srinivasan was briefly detained and received two summonses, one for obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic and another for refusing to disperse. Her lawyers said that she did not disclose the summonses to the visa renewal form because there was no charge against her, no criminal record and the case was dismissed.
“She was taken in with roughly 100 other people after being blocked from returning to her apartment and getting stuck in the street,” said Nathan Yaffe, one of her lawyers. “The court recognized this when it dismissed her case as having no merit. Ranjani was just trying to walk home.”
“Because I had not and the charges were dismissed, I sort of marked it as ‘no,’” Srinivasan said on not disclosing the information for the visa renewal. “But maybe that was my mistake. I would have been happy to disclose that, but just the way they had questioned us was sort of assuming that you had a conviction.”
Srinivasan said she was not an activist and, unlike Mahmoud Khalil, she was not a member of any group that organized demonstrations on campus. “I’m just surprised that I’m a person of interest,” she said. “I’m kind of a rando, like, absolute rando,” she said.
Why did Srinivasan self-deport herself?
On March 5, Srinivasan received an email from the US Consulate, Chennai (India) informing her that her visa was revoked. They did not provide any reason. She approached her university for guidance who informed her that she could remain in the US for the time being. On March 7, ICE agents visited her but her roommate did not open the gate. Then she received an email from her university saying that Columbia was informed by Homeland Security that her legal status in the country was terminated and hence the university withdrew her enrollment. Srinivasan then left the country and flew to Canada.