Judge roasts Trump admin on Columbia student: "You've got to be kidding"
Yunseo Chung's case reached an impasse, and a federal judge seems frustrated that the government won't accept a solution.
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Columbia University student Yunseo Chung’s case stands apart from other green card-holding scholars targeted by the Trump administration for deportation because of their pro-Palestinian activism.
Unlike the cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, Chung has never been in immigration custody, and officials have not been able to find her for nearly three months.
At a federal court hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald offered a proposal that would break the impasse. The government could serve its notice to Chung’s attorneys, effectively initiating removal proceedings against their client.
The government’s attorney Brandon Waterman, however, resisted the proposal: Immigration officials might want to arrest Chung, even if it means delaying her removal proceedings.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” a visibly frustrated Judge Buchwald told him.
Chung’s lawyers at Human Rights First have started an online petition, asking the public to write their elected representatives in her support.
“A more benign, civilized fashion”
Before that exchange, Judge Buchwald made clear: If she were in government custody, Chung likely would be let out on bail. She is not a danger to the community. She has not been charged with any crime, except for now-dismissed misdemeanor offenses. She is not a risk of flight.
“If she fled, the government in this case wouldn’t care, so it isn’t a problem,” Buchwald said.
The judge characterized her proposal as a “win-win” for both parties. The government would be able to start the deportation proceedings, and Chung would be able to defend herself on the merits in “a more benign, civilized fashion.”
“There’s no need to arrest her,” the judge said. “She’s spared the trauma of that.”
Chung’s attorneys eagerly agreed, and Buchwald appeared exasperated at the government’s reluctance.
“If ICE chooses not to utilize that approach, it says a great deal about their motivation in this case,” the judge said, adding that the decision would factor into the case as it proceeds.
The proceedings adjourned shortly after the exchange. Waterman agreed to run the idea by ICE, his “client,” and try to get her a decision an hour later. ICE didn’t reply on time, and so the hearing adjourned for another week.
“An attractive solution”
If anything, the government’s current insistence on actually arresting Chung delays their stated objective of deporting her, but the Trump administration’s approach to student protesters has valued spectacle over necessity.
Khalil was arrested in front of his pregnant wife at their New York City apartment at night. Plainclothes and armed officers apprehended Öztürk on the street near her Massachusetts home. Mahdawi flashed a peace sign as masked officers walked him over to a car. All of those arrests went viral on social media, and all three of those students now have rulings finding that their arrests stood on shaky legal ground.
Öztürk and Mahdawi’s judges found that the Trump administration likely violated their First Amendment rights, and Khalil’s found that Secretary Marco Rubio’s justification for his targeting was likely unconstitutionally vague.
Chung hasn’t been able to obtain such a ruling because she is not officially in custody.
Without that, the judge said that she has no recourse to habeas corpus, but she could vault that hurdle by receiving a notice to appear through her attorneys or by mail at her address.
Judge Buchwald said: “I think there’s an attractive solution here, or a very unattractive position as well.”
Her lawyer Ramzi Kassem said that the only reason he can imagine for why the government refuses to do that is that they want to send her to Louisiana, like the other targeted students. He said that the government is targeting a student with a “near-perfect GPA.”
Buchwald, who also went to Columbia, joked “better than I did.”
A follow-up hearing is slated for Thursday, June 5 at 1:45 p.m.
Rape is an act of violence that seeks to break the humanity of the person raped, which 90%+ of the time in America means rape victims are women. Smart women have always been targets for these types of bigots. It’s in the very nature of these Trumpian incel types to explicitly lock up women of intelligence and independence and at least have the potential, if not the ability, to sexually abuse and rape this particular group of women, who represent all the incels hate, because the incels couldn’t achieve such academic and professional success, or even come close to achieving the professional successes of these targeted women that ICE insists on locking up. It’s a psycho-sexual torture and domination fantasy that is pornography made manifest, brought to you by the cruel overlords of Trump & Co.
I recently watched Winter Soldiers about the testimony of vets who fought in the Vietnam War. They spoke about the "body count" targets and the inhumane methods that were used to meet those body count targets that were handed down from the top. This post reminds me of what is happening with ICE, and we can expect it to get worse. Miller/Noem have set a "body count" target of 3000 immigrants a day to be arrested. To meet that target, expect the illogical, nonsensical and inhumane activities of ICE to escalate tenfold. Media needs to start exposing these "targets" as "body counts", because that is what they are. (Also ties into the dehumanization of the "bodies" and the increased likelihood of their abuse at the hands of their captors).