TOI correspondent from Washington: An Indian doctoral candidate at Columbia University — alma mater of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, architect of India’s constitution among other desi luminaries — has self-deported from the US after the Trump administration, calling her a “terrorist sympathiser,” revoked her student visa last week.
The Department of Homeland Security released video footage at showing Ranjani Srinivasan, a PhD student in Urban Planning, hurrying through an airport terminal on March 11 after the state department revoked her F-1 student visa on March 5, ostensibly for participating in pro-Palestine protests on the campus.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem said in a note about the video footage.
“I am glad to see one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self-deport,” she added.
The administration has offered no evidence that Srinivasan advocated violence or terrorism or was a terrorist sympathizer, but students participating in protests against Israeli action in Gaza and expressing sympathy for Palestinian suffering, while glossing over the terrorist attack on Israel, have broadly been accused of supporting Hamas, a militant outfit that was designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 during the Clinton Presidency.
The CBP app Noem referred to was originally designed by the Biden administration as CBP One to streamline travel and cargo facilitation, and later expanded to address asylum processing amid an explosion in illegal border crossing in 2022. The Trump administration has now repurposed by adding an “intent to depart” section while encouraging illegal immigrants and out of status individuals to self-deport. Srinivasan appears to have opted for the latter after her student visa was revoked, rather than risking arrest and deportation by authorities.
Aside from Srinivasan’s self-deportation, officials also revealed that Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from West Bank, was arrested by ICE officers for overstaying her expired F-1 student visa. Kordia had previously been arrested in April 2024 for her involvement in pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University.
Senior Trump associates, including vice-president JD Vance, have warned that many more students on F-1 visas and even green card holders who may have participated in activities inimical to US security are on the radar for deportation. The warnings came after the US law enforcement authorities detained Syria-born Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia university grad student, who has a green card that permits permanent residency, for pro-Hamas activities.
“A green card holder doesn’t have an indefinite right to be in the United States. This is not about ‘free speech.’ Yes, it’s about national security ~ but more importantly, it’s about who we, as American citizens, decide gets to join our national community,” Vance said in Friday in a distinct hardening of views on immigration although his US-born wife Usha is of Indian heritage, and his in-laws immigrated to the US.
“I think we’ll certainly see some people who get deported on student visas if we determine … it’s not in the best interest of the United States to have them in our country,” he added.
Khalil remains incarcerated in Louisiana without formal charges or a court appearance. On Saturday, his wife Noor Abdalla, an American citizen and eight months pregnant, released footage of his arrest, saying it felt like a kidnapping because “the officers were in plainclothes, they refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names — (as they) forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me.”
Meanwhile, it was not clear if Srinivasan intended to return to India although some reports said her immediate — and possibly transit — destination was Canada. MAGA hardliners jeered her out on social media with comments equivalent to “don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” joined by their right wing Indian counterparts who chimed in that her liberal “wokeness” had brought disgrace to New Delhi.
MAGA and MIGA trolls made merry over the “wokey” emphasis on pronouns in her profiles and resume, which revealed she is a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), with a Bachelor’s in Design from CEPT University in Ahmedabad, and a Master’s in Design from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, earned through Fulbright Nehru and Inlaks Scholarships.
Srinivasan’s graduate research, “Gold & Cyanide: Family, Caste, and the Post-extractive Landscape at Kolar Gold Fields,” explored caste dynamics in postcolonial India’s extractive economies. At Columbia, her doctoral research examined land-labor relations in peri-urban India, analyzing the political economy of development and jobless growth.
Before starting her PhD, she worked as a project associate at an environmental conservation and planning advocacy nonprofit in Washington, D.C ., “campaigning for critical landscapes and frontier communities at-risk from climate change” — just the kind of work the Trump administration is down on.