Trump administration has intensified its campaign against foreign students for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University last year. While the Indian national self deports herself, another woman was arrested in Newark after she failed to leave despite her visa expired.
Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants in the United States, Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian national and a doctoral student at Columbia University, voluntarily left the United States after her visa was revoked for allegedly “advocating violence and terrorism.”
Providing details about her self-deportation, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in a statement on Friday (local time), said that Srinivasan, a student in Urban Planning at Columbia University, self-deported using the CBP Home App.
As per the release by the the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that one of the Columbia students who had her student visa revoked for advocating for violence and terrorism self-deported using the CBP Home App and ICE arrested a Palestinian student for overstaying her expired F-1 visa.”
Srinivasan’s visa was revoked on March 5, alleging her involvement in “activities supporting Hamas.” According to the release, Ranjani Srinivasan, a citizen and national of India, entered the United States on an F-1 student visa as a doctoral student in Urban Planning at Columbia University.
She was involved in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization. On March 5, 2025, the Department of State revoked her visa. The Department of Homeland Security has obtained video footage of her using the CBP Home App to self-deport on March 11, the release added.
Furthermore, in a stern assertion, Secretary Noem said that holding a US visa is a privilege. “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. I’m glad to see one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self deport,” she wrote in a post on X.
(With ANI Inputs)
