Link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/02/mcgg-m02.html

On Thursday morning around 6 a.m., federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived at a Columbia University residential building and, posing as police officers searching for a missing child, kidnapped Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva, an immigrant undergraduate student at Columbia studying neuroscience and political science.

In a chat message to fellow Columbia students, Aghayeva said, “ICE is in my house. They are trying to take me away.” ICE agents removed her to the notoriously filthy federal detention center in lower Manhattan.

Aghayeva was freed several hours later after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), called President Trump and asked for her release. Trump met with Mamdani on Thursday to discuss federal aid for a major real estate development in Queens.

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