A Columbia University senior detained by federal immigration authorities was released hours after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani raised concerns about her arrest during a White House meeting with President Donald Trump.
Elmina Aghayeva, a neuroscience and politics student from Azerbaijan, was arrested in Manhattan early Thursday. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said ICE agents gained entry to her apartment after claiming to be police searching for a missing child; CCTV footage reportedly shows agents in a hallway displaying pictures of the alleged child.
Aghayeva, who chronicles life as an immigrant student on Instagram, posted that “DHS illegally arrested me. Please help.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Associated Press that Aghayeva’s student visa was terminated in 2016 for failing to attend classes, and described her as an ‘illegal alien’ against whom removal proceedings were launched. Aghayeva’s lawyers said she entered the U.S. legally in 2016 and filed a petition in Manhattan Federal Court saying she was “wrongly held in detention without justification.”
In Washington, Mamdani raised Aghayeva’s detention during a meeting with Trump about New York City housing. Mamdani said he phoned the president afterward and was told she would be released; DHS later confirmed her release. Aghayeva posted on Instagram: “I just got out a little while ago. I am safe and okay.”
The episode highlights the unusual public dynamic between Trump and Mamdani, a young Muslim democratic socialist mayor who has previously been derided by the president and even threatened with deportation. The Oval Office meeting was their second encounter since Mamdani’s election last year; during a November meeting, Trump called him “a very rational person” and said he would help make New York “strong and very safe.”
Mamdani also reportedly asked Trump to drop cases against other students facing deportation over pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia—cases in which Aghayeva is not known to have been involved.
Edited by Rana Taha