It had to be spam. That’s what 37-year-old Ranjani Srinivasan thought when she first received an email from the United States consulate in Chennai, the southern Indian city where the Columbia University PhD candidate is from, telling her that her visa had been cancelled.
The email, which arrived at midnight, had slipped past Srinivasan’s tired eyes before she went to bed. But on Thursday, March 6, at about 7:50am in New York City, it was almost the first thing she saw when she stirred awake in her Columbia-owned apartment. Still groggy, she reached for her phone, its screen glowing in the dim morning haze.
She turned to her PhD cohort on their WhatsApp group to check if anyone else had received similar emails about their visas – but no one had. Now uneasy, Srinivasan promptly entered her details into the US online immigration website. “It said my visa had been revoked. That’s when I started getting scared,” she recalls.
It was the start of 10 days of confusion and fear for Srinivasan that culminated in her name and grainy airport camera image making global headlines after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused her of being a “terrorist sympathiser” on X.
By then, Srinivasan was in Canada, staying with friends and family, having flown out of New York on March 11, four days before Noem’s post, after concluding that she could be arrested – even though the US government has still not made clear whether she is accused of any crime. She rejects the suggestion that she is supportive of terrorists, but assumes her visa was revoked because of online support for Palestine as Israel’s brutal war on Gaza continues.
And she recalls how she spent those final few days in New York before she left, unable to sleep and barely able to eat, jumping at every strange noise – a life she does not want to risk returning to.
The knock on the door
At about 8:30am, she emailed Columbia’s International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO), seeking clarification on what the visa revocation meant for her status in the US. There was no emergency hotline to call.
“When they didn’t reply, I reached out to my dean and adviser – everyone. They had to pressure ISSO to respond.”
It wasn’t until late afternoon that she finally heard back. In their written response, the ISSO assured her that she was “perfectly fine” and that her Form I-20 – the fundamental document that foreign students in the US need to stay there legally – remained valid.
The ISSO then asked her to schedule an adviser appointment. Initially, they offered her a slot for the following Tuesday. But when she insisted the matter was urgent, the office moved the meeting up, scheduling it for the next day, Thursday, March 7.
At 10:30am the next day, she logged onto a Zoom call with the ISSO representative, who reassured her again that her Form I-20 was still valid.
“The moment I got this info, I felt much lighter,” Ranjani recalls. “I started planning when I could go back to the field [for research].” In December 2024, her visa – originally set to expire in August 2025 – had been renewed until 2029. She wondered about possible reasons why her visa had been revoked.
“Maybe they just gave me too long of a visa,” she remembers thinking.
“All these things were running through my head. I was also considering whether I should resume teaching my 60 students, start working again on guiding them.”
But 10 minutes into the Zoom call, there was a knock on the door.
Her American flatmate, who was at home at the time, felt there was something unusual about the knock. “Without opening the door, she asked them to identify themselves,” Srinivasan says.
The individuals at the door first claimed to be police, then a “supervisor,” without providing credentials, Srinivasan says. When the flatmate asked: “Supervisor of what?”, they responded: “Immigration,” according to Srinivasan’s account.
Speaking from the other side of the door, they said that her visa had been revoked and that they intended to put her through proceedings to remove her from the US. They eventually left, and though they never fully identified themselves, Srinivasan is convinced they were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
“I freaked out. Why is ICE at my door? You live in Columbia residential housing – a place you’d definitely consider safe. So the fact that they were able to enter Columbia’s residential area without a warrant was terrifying,” she says.
Still on the call, Srinivasan immediately informed the ISSO adviser. “She had an expression of shock,” Srinivasan says. “Then she muted herself and started calling people frantically.”
When the ISSO adviser unmuted, she handed Srinivasan a list of lawyers and advised her to call Public Safety – the campus security guards. Public Safety advised her to not open the door to ICE officials and informed her that they would “file a report”. But that did little to reassure her.
In a statement to Al Jazeera, Kendall Easley, a spokesperson for Columbia’s ISSO, said that “consistent with our longstanding practice, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings”.
Yet, Srinivasan says, “they [law enforcement officers] were on campus.”
“At this point, I realised that nobody was really helping me. I sat in the flat for two more hours, extremely scared – jumpy. The walls in our building aren’t thick, so any noise in the corridor made me flinch, thinking they were back with a warrant.”
Unable to shake the fear of being detained at any moment, she packed quickly and left for a location that Srinivasan does not want to disclose. There was no time for sentimentality – just a quiet exit with a laptop bag, her PhD notebook, a handful of chargers, and a small carry-on with a few clothes, a bottle of shampoo, and a box of tampons. “I just took the bag I randomly grab every day for the PhD office,” she recalls.
She walked out of the flat she had called home since 2021, leaving behind everything; her furniture, all her remaining belongings, the Indian groceries she had ordered the night before, and even Cricket, her beloved cat.
The final straw
Srinivasan says that Danielle Smoller, the dean of student affairs at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, called her on March 7 after hearing from public safety about the visit by immigration officials.
“She was sympathetic but admitted it ‘felt like ISSO and even Columbia are not in control,'” Srinivasan says. According to her, Columbia made no further effort to contact her.
The ISSO did not respond specifically to Al Jazeera’s questions about Srinivasan’s complaint that Columbia made little further effort to help her. “Columbia has taken and will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure our international students and scholars know they are welcomed on our campus and in our community,” Easley, the spokesperson, said. “We are proud of our long history of welcoming students and scholars from around the world to learn, teach, and grow with us.”
That’s not what it felt like to Srinivasan.
On March 8 at 6:20pm, the agents returned – again without a warrant. “My flatmate told me they said, ‘We’re going to keep coming every day until we can put you in removal proceedings,’” Srinivasan says. The flatmate did not say anything to the agents, according to what she told Srinivasan.
That same day, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate who had a Green Card – making him a permanent resident of the US – was arrested from Columbia housing. Khalil had been a leader of the pro-Palestinian protests on campus over the past year.
“The moment Mahmoud got arrested, it sent shockwaves across the Columbia community. He’s a Green Card holder,” Srinivasan says. “That’s when I realised I have no rights in this system at all. It was only a matter of time before they caught hold of me.
“The thing is, I didn’t even know Mahmoud. I hadn’t even heard his name until he disappeared,” she says. “But what truly unsettled me was that Columbia already knew ICE was operating on campus – yet seemed uninterested in intervening and even appeared to be colluding with them before Mahmoud disappeared.”
On March 9, ISSO informed Srinivasan that her student status had been revoked. Columbia followed by officially withdrawing her enrolment and notifying her to vacate university housing.
Srinivasan knew her time in the US was up. She wasn’t about to wait to be deported. On March 11, she left for Canada using a visitor visa she had obtained for previous academic workshops and conferences.
Branded a ‘terrorist sympathizer’
Once she was out of the US, Srinivasan’s lawyers notified ICE of her departure on March 14. ICE responded by demanding proof.
Her lawyers were still compiling proof of her departure when, on March 14, Noem posted a now-viral security camera clip of Srinivasan at LaGuardia airport. The caption labelled her a “terrorist sympathizer,” stating that those who “advocate terrorism and violence” must not be allowed to remain in the US.
The accusation stunned Srinivasan. “It was the first time I was hearing such speculations in an official voice,” she says. “If supporting the idea of human rights or ending a genocide is equated with supporting Hamas, then anyone in proximity to me – without me having done anything – can just be picked up and made an example of.”
She believes she was targeted for her speech and limited social media activity, which included posts and shares of content critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. While she had signed several open letters supporting Palestinian rights, she insists she was never part of any organised campus group. Although she had participated in pro-Palestine protests in the past, she says she wasn’t even in the US for most of April 2024, when student-led demonstrations escalated across campuses.
The official announcement also claimed that she had “self-deported” using the newly launched US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home app, which allows undocumented immigrants to submit an ‘intent to depart’ form and leave voluntarily. Srinivasan, however, says she had never even heard of the app.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a series of questions: On what specific grounds was Srinivasan’s visa revoked? Was she informed of the reasons in advance? And does DHS have evidence linking her to activities that warranted such action? The department has not responded yet.
“The tweet was the first time I could clearly see that they had linked me to the protests,” she says.
In a statement to Al Jazeera, Student Workers of Columbia (UAW Local 2710), the union that represents more than 3,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers at the Ivy League university, said “Ranjani’s case exposes a dangerous precedent”.
“There is an exception being created for protests where anyone who even speaks about Palestine is targeted.”
The union argued that graduate students on campus today feel increasingly vulnerable. “International students, in particular, feel disposable – at the mercy of the state, with no protection or support from the university,” the statement said.
SWC accused Columbia of enabling this repression. “Trump abducted our classmates and cut our research funding – but he couldn’t have done this if Columbia hadn’t fueled the lie that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, inflaming hate against pro-Palestine protests.
“International and undocumented students are afraid to leave their homes, let alone teach seminars, attend class, or go to the lab,” the statement said. “Fighting for Ranjani’s reinstatement,” it said, “isn’t just about basic rights – it’s about our survival.”
In the week leading up to her departure for Canada, Srinivasan’s anxiety was compounded by her worries about how she would break the news to her parents. She wanted to control how her family learned about the situation, and feared that the media might get to know first. She eventually called her father and mother, informing them that her visa had been revoked but assuring them she was OK. “I assured them, but I didn’t give them all the details about ICE being after me. Of course, now they know the whole story,” she says.
The day the DHS tweet went out, fear took over. Her parents were worried for their safety even in Chennai, and left to stay with relatives, unsure how to respond. “We are ordinary people, an ordinary family. Who would ever imagine something like this happening to them?” Srinivasan says.
Their fears weren’t unfounded. As the tweet spread, so did misinformation, especially in the Indian media, where speculation and misreporting around her name only deepened their anxiety. It was only after things began to settle, after they started feeling safer, that her parents returned home.
Now, even if her visa is reinstated and if Columbia restores her enrolment, Srinivasan is unsure whether she would feel secure returning to the US to complete her PhD. “I hope Columbia comes to its senses and re-enrols me,” she says. “All the requirements for my PhD are complete, and whatever is left, I don’t even need to be in the US for. So I’m trying to appeal to Columbia to do that.”
But irrespective of what happens, Srinivsan feels a deep sense of betrayal.
“I spent five years at Columbia, working – I don’t know – maybe 100 hours a week sometimes,” she says. “I never expected the institution to let me down. But it did.”
