ICE Agents Seize Columbia Student Ellie Aghayeva Inside Dorm; ICE Says Arrest, Students Call Abduction

Early on a Thursday morning, ICE agents entered Columbia University housing and detained Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva after reportedly posing as police searching for a missing child.

“NUEVA YORK -- Días después de que una estudiante de la Universidad de Columbia fuera arrestada dentro de su residencia universitaria por agentes del ICE que supuestamente se hicieron pasar por policías que buscaban a una menor desaparecida, lo que desató indignación y protestas, hubo pocos detalles nuevos sobre su caso de deportación”

Telemundo New York

Multiple accounts identify Aghayeva as a Columbia neuroscience student who alerted classmates during the incident.

Telemundo New York

She was taken to the Manhattan federal detention center, according to the reports.

Sources describe the entry as occurring inside university residential buildings and characterize the action as an ICE detention inside a dormitory.

Reporting and an Intercept investigation raise questions about warrantless access and Columbia’s execution of its own policies: the university’s rules require law enforcement to present a judicial warrant or subpoena to access non-public campus areas, but sources say staff and campus security have not consistently demanded such warrants.

The Intercept recounts that agents reportedly gained entry in Aghayeva’s case by telling a building attendant they were searching for a missing child, and it links this episode to other campus detentions.

The Intercept

Aghayeva was released several hours after her detention.

“On Thursday morning, at around 6 a”

World Socialist Web Site

Multiple sources say New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani phoned President Trump and that intervention is tied to her release.

Columbia publicly publicized the arrest, moved quickly to secure her release and increase patrols.

Aghayeva posted that she was "sana y salva" and in "total shock."

Sources also note that the circumstances of the release and the publicity around it have been politically consequential.

The detention prompted protests and broader criticism.

Accounts describe an emergency demonstration of faculty, students and supporters and say the NYPD blocked demonstrators.

Telemundo New York

Critics argue the raid fits a pattern of targeting students involved in or associated with pro-Palestine campus activity, while other reporting notes no public link has been established between Aghayeva and those protests.

Legal uncertainty remains: one source reports a federal judge dismissed as moot a motion from Aghayeva’s lawyers after her release, and it is unclear whether that affects any pending deportation proceedings.