Yunseo Chung is on the Run
ICE Targets Another Ivy League Student With Deportation Proceedings.
WASHINGTON—Yunseo Chung, a twenty-one-year-old junior at Columbia University, a legal permanent resident who has called the United States home since she was seven—finds herself a fugitive of sorts, not from justice but from a government that seems determined to redefine it. She is on the run, her whereabouts undisclosed, as federal agents scour dormitories and family homes, wielding administrative warrants and the blunt force of executive power. Her crime? Raising her voice. Her weapon? A constitutionally protected right that has been the bedrock of American democracy since its founding: the right to protest.
Chung’s story, detailed in a lawsuit filed on March 24, 2025, before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is a chilling tableau of a nation at a crossroads. She argues that the Trump administration, in its zeal to deport her, is not merely targeting a single college student but waging a broader assault on the First Amendment. Her legal complaint is a cri de cœur, a meticulously argued plea that the government’s actions constitute “shocking overreach” and an “unprecedented and unjustifiable assault” on free speech. She accuses the administration of retaliating against her for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia—protests that, while contentious, fall squarely within the realm of political expression that the Founders sought to shield from tyranny.
The sequence of events is as swift as it is alarming. On March 5, Chung joined a sit-in at Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, to protest what she and others saw as excessive disciplinary measures against students advocating for Palestinian rights. She was arrested by the New York Police Department, issued a desk appearance ticket for “obstruction of governmental administration”—a minor charge—and released. But within days, the federal machinery whirred into motion. On March 8, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed an administrative warrant for her arrest. On March 9, agents descended on her parents’ home. By March 10, a federal official informed her lawyer that her lawful permanent resident status—her green card, earned in 2021—was being revoked. Three days later, her dorm was searched. The message was clear: dissent, even from a lawful resident, would not be tolerated.
MIGRANT INSIDER IS SPONSORED BY
Chung’s lawsuit contends that this is no isolated vendetta but part of a “pattern and practice” by the Trump administration to silence noncitizens who dare to speak out, particularly those who criticize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza or champion Palestinian humanity. Her attorneys argue that the government’s claim—that her presence somehow threatens U.S. foreign policy—is a flimsy pretext, a legal fiction designed to bypass the due process only an immigration judge can adjudicate. “Immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation—may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express political views disfavored by the current administration,” the complaint asserts. It is a plea not just for Chung’s safety but for the soul of a nation that has long prided itself on protecting the powerless against the powerful.
This case is the latest salvo in what appears to be a calculated campaign by the Trump administration to fracture the inalienable American right to protest—a right that has fueled abolition, suffrage, civil rights, and every moral reckoning this country has faced. Chung’s predicament echoes the arrest earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, another Columbia student and green card holder, targeted for similar activism. It mirrors the threats against Cornell’s Momodou Taal and others, all noncitizens ensnared in a dragnet that conflates dissent with disloyalty. The administration’s rhetoric, branding these protests “pro-Hamas” or “antisemitic,” is a cudgel, wielded to justify policies that shred the Constitution under the guise of national security.
And who bears the cost of this crusade? Illegal immigrants—millions of hardworking souls who toil in fields, kitchens, and construction sites—are being terrorized on the taxpayer dime. The irony is grotesque: a government that claims fiscal prudence spends lavishly to hunt down those who sustain its economy. According to the 2024 Right-Wing Spending and Narratives Report by Catalyze Citizens, the anti-immigrant ecosystem—think tanks, media outlets, and advocacy groups—has ballooned into a $200 million industry, funded in part by taxpayers and amplified by a network of right-wing donors. This machine churns out a brutal disparagement of migrant contributions, erasing their labor from the national ledger. Yet the data is undeniable: immigrants, documented and undocumented, contribute at least $1.6 trillion annually to the U.S. economy through consumer spending and taxes. They pay $492 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year, including $183 billion from undocumented workers alone—money that funds the very ICE agents now chasing Chung.
MIGRANT INSIDER IS SPONSORED BY
The cultural erasure is equally stark. Migrants have enriched America’s tapestry—its music, its literature, its cuisine—while answering the call to every American war. The report notes that over 3 million immigrants have served in the U.S. military since the Revolutionary War, including 700,000 since 9/11. In World War II, one in five Medal of Honor recipients was an immigrant. Today, 8 percent of active-duty military personnel are foreign-born. Yet the narrative peddled by the administration and its allies casts them as threats, not patriots, a distortion that the Catalyze report pegs to a $100 million annual investment in anti-immigrant messaging.
Chung, a valedictorian turned Ivy League scholar with a 3.99 GPA, embodies this paradox. She is no radical firebrand; her protest was not a call to arms but a cry against perceived injustice. Her lawsuit asks a simple question: If a lawful resident can be hunted for speaking out, what hope remains for the undocumented, the voiceless, the millions who lack her platform? The answer lies in the courts, but also in the conscience of a nation that must decide whether it will honor its promises or surrender them to fear.
For now, Yunseo Chung is on the run—not from the law, but from a government that seems to have forgotten it. Her case is a test: of free speech, of immigrant rights, of America itself. History will judge how we respond.