How Fulbright Scholar Ranjani Srinivasan Beat Trump’s ICE and DHS to Escape to Canada and Freedom

An Indian doctoral student at Columbia University fled to Canada last week after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents made repeated attempts to detain her following the sudden revocation of her student visa, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times and The Hindu.

Ranjani Srinivasan, 37, a Fulbright scholar in her fifth year of a doctoral program in urban planning at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, received an email on March 5 from the U.S. Consulate in Chennai informing her that her visa had been revoked without explanation, stating only that “information has come to light” that might make her ineligible.

“The atmosphere seemed so volatile and dangerous,” Srinivasan told The New York Times in her first public remarks since leaving the country. “So I just made a quick decision.”

According to reports from both publications, ICE agents visited Srinivasan’s Columbia University apartment three times over an eight-day period. She was not present during the first visit on a Friday morning, nor during a second attempt the following night—just hours before another Columbia student with pro-Palestinian views, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained.

Srinivasan decided to flee, leaving her cat with a friend and catching a flight to Canada from LaGuardia Airport. When agents returned a third time on Thursday night, armed with a judicial warrant to enter her apartment, she was already gone.

The Department of Homeland Security subsequently issued a statement characterizing Srinivasan as a “terrorist sympathizer” and accused her of “advocating violence” and being “involved in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization,” though the department provided no evidence to support these allegations.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem celebrated what she called Srinivasan’s “self-deportation” on social media, posting surveillance footage of her at LaGuardia Airport and writing: “It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live & study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked and you should not be in this country.”

Srinivasan’s lawyers have vehemently denied these accusations. “Secretary Noem’s tweet is not only factually wrong but fundamentally un-American,” said Naz Ahmad, one of her attorneys, in a statement. “For at least a week, D.H.S. has made clear its intent to punish her for her speech, and they have failed in their efforts.”

Unlike Khalil, Srinivasan maintains she was not an activist or a member of any group organizing campus demonstrations. “While I have been framed as an activist, I have actually done zero activism. I was doing my research near Bengaluru during that time,” she told The Hindu.

When questioned, DHS officials told The Times that Srinivasan failed to disclose two court summonses related to campus protests when renewing her visa last year. Srinivasan explained that these summonses stemmed from an incident in 2023 when she was returning to her apartment after a picnic with friends and was caught in a crowd as police arrested protesters. Her case was quickly dismissed without resulting in a criminal record.

“She was taken in with roughly 100 other people after being blocked from returning to her apartment and getting stuck in the street,” said Nathan Yaffe, another of her lawyers. “The court recognized this when it dismissed her case as having no merit. Ranjani was just trying to walk home.”

Speaking to The Hindu from an undisclosed location in Canada, Srinivasan expressed fear of retaliation and confusion about the specific charges against her that led to her disenrollment from Columbia just six months before completing her PhD.

“It’s kind of inexplicable how it happened. There aren’t any legal grounds to deport me,” she told The Hindu, noting that her status as a Teaching Assistant and her I-20 visa were terminated, leaving her with only a 15-day grace period to leave the country.

Unlike Khalil, Srinivasan maintains she was not an activist or a member of any group organizing campus demonstrations. “While I have been framed as an activist, I have actually done zero activism. I was doing my research near Bengaluru during that time,” she told The Hindu.

She acknowledged that her social media activity had been mostly limited to liking or sharing posts about “human rights violations” in Gaza, and that she had signed several open letters, including one by architecture scholars calling for “Palestinian liberation.”

“I’m just surprised that I’m a person of interest,” she told The Times. “I’m kind of a rando, like, absolute rando,” she said, using slang for random.

Immigration lawyers described the government’s actions as highly unusual. “It is more rare for the government to act the way it has, such as in the cases in Columbia University, where they’re going on campus and conducting an operation to apprehend somebody,” said Greg Chen, a lawyer at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, speaking to The Times.

Jason Houser, a senior ICE official during the Biden administration, told The Times that “criminalizing free speech through radicalized immigration enforcement is a direct attack on our democracy.”

The targeting of Srinivasan comes as part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration on pro-Palestinian demonstrators at universities using federal immigration powers. Last week, President Trump canceled $400 million in grants to Columbia University, accusing it of failing to protect Jewish students.

Srinivasan, who came to the United States from India as part of the Fulbright program in 2016 and enrolled at Columbia in 2020, is seeking help from the Indian government to support her in regaining her F1 visa so she can complete her PhD thesis.

“I have done nothing wrong. I was a Fulbright scholar, I was at Harvard and now I am in Columbia. I have no criminal record. I have no criminal past,” she told The Hindu. “I do feel like that if it can happen to someone who does not have the markings of someone who is usually targeted, then it could really happen to anyone with an F1 visa.”