(JTA) — The Trump administration must stop trying to deport Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, federal Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled on Tuesday.
Chung, 21, is an undergraduate who is a legal permanent resident of the United States. She sued the administration after federal officers visited her dorm room in an attempt to arrest her ahead of deportation. Buchwald said the administration had not demonstrated that Chung poses a foreign policy risk.
The ruling is the latest development in the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to deport pro-Palestinian student activists, which it says is part of its fight against antisemitism.
It is not the first case with Jewish significance that Buchwald, who is Jewish, has ruled on. In 2012, she ruled on a case involving metzitza b’peh, a controversial Jewish circumcision ritual. In 2013, she sentenced Heshy Tischler, an Orthodox radio host and perennial political candidate in Brooklyn, to prison for fraud.
She has also ruled in the past against President Donald Trump, determining in 2018 that it violated the First Amendment for him to block people on Twitter.
Buchwald is likewise not the first Jewish federal judge to rule on the deportation efforts. Earlier this month, Judge Jesse Furman blocked the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, who earned a master’s degree from Columbia in December. Khalil, who was arrested inside his Columbia-owned apartment building, remains in detention.