The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked a Cornell University doctoral student and prominent pro-Palestinian protester to surrender himself for deportation proceedings after he preemptively sued the Trump administration, his lawyers said.

Momodou Taal’s lawyers said Friday that ICE ordered and pressured Taal to surrender after he sought a judge’s temporary restraining order to prevent the Trump administration from detaining and deporting him. He sought the restraining order after ICE sent agents to stake out his house, according to Taal’s representatives.

“ICE invites Mr. Taal and his counsel to appear in-person at the HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] Office in Syracuse at a mutually agreeable time for personal service of the NTA [Notice to Appear] and for Mr. Taal to surrender to ICE custody,” an email sent Friday by the Department of Justice prosecutors partly read, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.

An NTA is an initial step toward deportation, according to CNN.

The prosecutors said they “wanted to reach out to establish a line of communication, and relate some information concerning your client” while their application for admission to the federal court in New York was pending, according to the email.

“In the past 48 hours, this administration has taken unprecedented steps to bypass the courts, by pressuring our client, Mr. Momodou Taal, to surrender to ICE,” Maria Kari, one of Taal’s attorneys, wrote in part.

“The Trump administration responded to Momodou Taal’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the executive orders by sending agents to stake out his house,” wrote Eric Lee, Taal’s lead counsel. “When we asked the Court to enjoin the administration from detaining Mr. Taal as the case progresses, the administration responded by ordering him to surrender to ICE. This does not happen in a democracy.”

Taal’s lawyers and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed the lawsuit enjoining the Trump administration from using two executive orders to “authorize deportation or prosecution based on protected speech,” the ADC said March 16.

I’m suing Trump.

This is my statement: pic.twitter.com/sw9Uv1F4YY

— Momodou ✊🏿 (@MomodouTaal) March 16, 2025

Taal and two other fellow plaintiffs — identified in the lawsuit as plant science doctoral student Sriram Parasurama and Professor of Literatures in English Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ — felt the “chilling effect” of the executive orders, which they argued “violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike by impermissibly restricting speech based on viewpoint, in violation of the First Amendment,” according to the lawsuit.

Taal is a British-Gambian PhD candidate at Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center, the ADC noted. The Ivy League university suspended him twice in 2024 for disruptive on-campus political activities, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. The other two plaintiffs are U.S. citizens, according to the ADC.

All three plaintiffs “now fear government retaliation for engaging in constitutionally protected expression critical of U.S. foreign policy and supportive of Palestinian human rights,” the lawsuit partly read.

Kari said the case was “a litmus test for the state of free speech in America.” Lee said ICE‘s request for Taal to surrender should make every American outraged and keen to defend free speech.

Law enforcement agents appeared around Taal’s home and on the Cornell University campus — both in Ithaca, New York March 19, Taal posted on X. He claimed that the Trump administration was seeking to preventively detain him and reiterated his commitment to pro-Palestinian activism.

Taal posted Oct. 7, 2023 — the same day Hamas conducted a lightning terrorist attack on Israel — “Glory to the resistance!” The post drew criticism.

AUTHOR

John Oyewale

Contriubutor.

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