An anti-Israel student at Cornell University, Momodou Taal, said on Monday he voluntarily left the U.S. after a judge rejected his lawsuit that sought to block the Trump administration’s deportations of protesters.
Taal’s student visa was revoked over his participation in anti-Israel protests on campus following Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. He was asked to turn himself in to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Instead, the student activist filed a lawsuit hoping to block the deportation of himself and others in his situation. His first motion was denied, and he was set to file a second motion in court. However, he decided to leave the U.S., claiming that he fears for his safety.
“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” Taal posted on X. “I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted. Weighing up these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms.”
He then accused the Trump administration of having “no respect for the judiciary or for the rule of the law” regarding its attempts to deport campus protesters, like Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil. President Donald Trump promised Khalil’s arrest would be the first of many.
Taal, a doctoral student studying Africana Studies and a Gambian-British national, was briefly suspended from Cornell last year over his anti-Israel activism. He, along with others, disrupted a career fair that featured weapons manufacturers.
Following October 7, he gained notoriety for posting statements sympathetic to Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian people such as “glory to the resistance!” and describing himself as “an anti-imperialist who believes that colonised peoples have the right to resist by any means necessary.”
In the message indicating his departure, Taal decried Jewish students “who dox, monitor, and collaborate with law enforcement to target students of color” for the purposes of deportation. The plaintiff’s lawsuit claimed the advocacy against him was made by a pro-Israel group, Betar, which submits names of protesters eligible for deportation.
“Betar confirms that @MomodouTaal was among those on our list of jihadis which we submitted to various government offices for deportation,” the group posted on March 21. “We are pleased he has been ordered to surrender to @ICEgov.”
The Trump administration is targeting campus protesters because of their involvement in antisemitic demonstrations and their sympathy for Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Some anti-Israel protesters detained for potential deportations include Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University scholar whose wife is the daughter of a former senior Hamas adviser, and Leqaa Kordia, a Columbia protester who was arrested for overstaying her student visa more than three years after it expired.