How ICE Duped a Federal Judge Into Signing a Search Warrant

As part of the Trump administration s targeting of Columbia University students for deportation a high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent submitted a wildly inaccurate affidavit to a federal judge to get a search warrant newly unsealed court records show The affidavit misstated basic facts and federal law attorneys stated The Intercept but the judge nonetheless signed off and authorized ICE to search two students dorm rooms based on the assertion that Columbia might be harboring them in violation of federal law Pointing to decisions of the State Department to revoke one apprentice s visa and the other s green card ICE argued they were in the U S unlawfully But neither ICE nor the State Department have the authority to determine whether someone is in the U S lawfully they need an order from an immigration judge first On top of that ICE s affidavit didn t offer evidence that Columbia took any concrete attempts to hide the students only that university administrators refused to let agents on campus to arrest them without judicial warrants This affidavit is seriously problematic and it s extremely troubling that it would be offered to a federal court explained David Leopold an immigration attorney uninvolved in the matter who reviewed the materials in an emailed announcement The entire basis for the criminal warrant was wrong wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council also uninvolved in the development in a social media post Related What Comes Next in Mahmoud Khalil s Fight Against Deportation The affidavit was unsealed in federal court on Tuesday as part of a lawsuit by Columbia apprentice Yunseo Chung a lawful permanent resident whose green card the Trump administration is trying to revoke based on her arrest at a campus Gaza protest earlier this year In a March order Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked an arcane legal provision he has used against other students with critical views of Israel determining that Chung s presence in the U S would have potentially serious adverse foreign strategy consequences Chung who is originally from South Korea and has lived in the U S since she was years old alleges she has been targeted in violation of her First Amendment and due process rights and that ICE obtained the warrant to search her dorm room under false pretenses The agent s sworn declaration confirms that under the guise of examining Columbia ICE s goal all along was to arrest Yunseo a permanent resident whose only apparent offense was participating in a protest related to Palestinian human rights revealed Ramzi Kassem a law professor at the City University of New York and co-director of CLEAR a legal nonprofit and clinic that represents Chung Even the minor protest-related charges that ICE cites in its affidavit have since been dismissed ICE and Columbia did not reply to The Intercept s request for comment about the search warrants A Judicial Fig Leaf The unsealed materials confirm that the federal anti-harboring statute was the sole legal justification that ICE offered to endorsement probable cause of a federal crime The ICE agent alleged that Columbia was concealing harboring or shielding from detection removable aliens The administration craved a judicial fig leaf to enter Yunseo s apartment and unconstitutionally arrest her Secretly and unconstitutionally the leadership supposedly revoked Yunseo s green card and then stated a judge it needed to search her apartment for fruits and instrumentalities of Columbia University s alleged harboring of her announced Joshua Colangelo-Bryan an attorney at Human Rights First who also represents Chung In other words the establishment required a judicial fig leaf to enter Yunseo s apartment and unconstitutionally arrest her In his March affidavit George Ioannidis an assistant special agent in charge of ICE s Homeland Safeguard Investigations in New York wrote that he expected the searches to yield evidence that Columbia had harbored Chung and another participant Ranjani Srinivasan whose scholar visa the State Department had revoked a week earlier Related ICE Got Warrants Under False Pretenses Indicates Columbia Scholar Targeted Over Gaza Protests But Srinivasan originally from India had already left the country by the time ICE sought a warrant to search her room as the Department of Homeland Guard blared in a triumphant press release and Ioannidis himself noted in his affidavit Obviously Columbia was not harboring someone who had left the country attorney Nathan Yaffe who represents both Srinivasan and Chung notified The Intercept This is essentially saber-rattling by ICE a warning shot meant to send a message to people who protest and members of their neighborhood More fundamentally the anti-harboring statute requires that the harbored person must really be in the country unlawfully and that the alleged harborer must take advancing actions to conceal that person from agents ICE s claim that revoking Srinivasan s apprentice visa made her presence in the country unlawful was flat out false Leopold commented Only an immigration judge can make that ruling if the person has been lawfully admitted to the U S Related Universities Described Students to Leave the Country ICE Just Reported They Didn t Definitely Have To Revoking a visa does NOT make someone instantly present without lawful status Reichlin-Melnick summarized That is absolutely false and ICE misrepresented this to the court Similarly until an immigration judge ordered otherwise Chung was in the country entirely lawfully as a permanent resident The statute is clear that if a person has legal status in the US it is impossible to harbor them ICE s affidavit confirms that Ms Chung is a permanent resident meaning she has legal status Yaffe reported Thus by ICE s own admission there s no good faith basis for ICE to have sought a harboring warrant related to Ms Chung By definition Reichlin-Melnick wrote Columbia can t have been harboring them Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent Columbia s Refusal to Comply Ioannidis also did not provide facts to indicate Columbia had taken any working procedures to conceal either aspirant His affidavit recounts the Trump administration s efforts to convince the university to allow ICE agents to come onto its property to arrest Chung and Srinivasan By strategy Columbia only allows immigration agents into nonpublic areas of campus if they have a judicial warrant which ICE did not yet have The regime sent Columbia demands and administrative warrants regarding both students but the university refused and continues to refuse to permit immigration officers to locate and arrest them Ioannidis wrote in his affidavit Columbia s refusal was the sole basis that Ioannidis offered under penalty of perjury as probable cause that its actions constituted harboring Refusing to comply with an administrative warrant to conduct a search of one s private property is not and cannot be a criminal offense wrote Columbia Law School professor Jamal Greene in a social media post about the search warrant materials Leopold explained Compliance with an administrative warrant is not mandatory The law provides no consequences for failure to comply Penalties may only be issued if a federal court orders compliance and the subject fails to comply After the materials were unsealed there was widespread concern at how Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger could have signed off on such a flimsy search warrant application Given the regime s essentially unprecedented basis revoking Chung s green card wrote Colangelo-Bryan One would think a court would have longed to drill down on that more before signing off on the warrant Chung first solicited the district court judge overseeing her lawsuit to unseal the search warrant materials in early April After Chung s request went unanswered for weeks The Intercept filed a letter emphasizing the inhabitants s interest in the materials which the New York Times also supported On May District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ordered the cabinet to begin the unsealing process The affidavit in sponsorship of the warrant is yet another example of the administration making clear that it won t let details like legality and facts stand in the way of its campaign of political repression Yaffe reported As we continue to get more information through discovery about the administration s misconduct here we re confident Ms Chung s legal declares will continue to be vindicated Unlike others targeted for their ties to Gaza protests Chung has not been detained despite ICE s efforts and Buchwald issued an order in March prohibiting the Trump administration from arresting her Oral argument in her circumstance is now scheduled for May The post How ICE Duped a Federal Judge Into Signing a Search Warrant appeared first on The Intercept