In a stunning display of resilience, Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral candidate in urban planning at Columbia University, was forced to abandon her academic dreams and flee the United States earlier this month. The 37-year-old Indian scholar, who had built a life in New York as a Fulbright recipient, left behind her apartment, her belongings, and her cat with a friend after U.S. immigration authorities arbitrarily revoked her student visa and descended upon her doorstep.
Her crime? Alleged ties to pro-Palestine demonstrations on Columbia University campus—protests that have shone a spotlight on the courage of students advocating for justice amid an increasingly repressive atmosphere in the U.S.
Srinivasan’s ordeal began when federal immigration agents arrived at her Columbia University apartment, an intrusion that underscores the heavy-handed tactics of a government intent on silencing dissent.
According to a report by The New York Times, she had recently discovered her visa had been canceled—a decision made without explanation by the State Department, leaving her academic future in tatters just six months before completing her PhD thesis.
“The atmosphere seemed so volatile and dangerous,” Srinivasan told The New York Times in her first public remarks since leaving the U.S., a sentiment that captures the chilling reality faced by international students caught in the crosshairs of U.S. policy.
The pro-Palestine protests at Columbia, part of a broader wave across American campuses, have been a powerful demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, drawing hundreds of students willing to risk their academic standing and personal safety to demand accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. These actions, far from being frivolous or violent as U.S. authorities might claim, reflect a principled stand against injustice—a stand Srinivasan appears to have supported, though she has emphasized she was neither an activist nor an organizer.
Her involvement, however tangential, was enough for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to brand her a threat, accusing her of “advocating for violence and terrorism” and linking her to Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
The revocation of Srinivasan’s visa on March 5, 2025, and her subsequent self-deportation via the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home App on March 11, highlight the Orwellian tools now at the disposal of U.S. authorities. The CBP Home App, launched by the Trump administration on March 10 as an overhaul of its predecessor, is touted as a means to “streamline immigration enforcement,” but its use in Srinivasan’s case reveals a darker purpose: coercing individuals into abandoning their lives under the threat of arrest or detention.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem celebrated Srinivasan’s departure, stating, “When you advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country. I am glad to see one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self-deport.”
Srinivasan travelled to Canada, where she has sought temporary refuge.
Srinivasan’s academic journey, once a beacon of promise, has been derailed by this crackdown. A graduate of CEPT University in Ahmedabad with a bachelor’s in design, she earned prestigious Fulbright Nehru and Inlaks Scholarships to pursue a master’s in critical conservation at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design before embarking on her PhD at Columbia. Her work in urban planning was poised to contribute meaningfully to global discourse—until U.S. authorities decided her voice was too dangerous to be heard. The DHS claims she failed to disclose two court summonses related to campus protests during a 2024 visa renewal, a technicality that hardly justifies the swift and secretive cancellation of her legal status. Columbia University, bowing to pressure, withdrew her enrollment, effectively abandoning a scholar who had dedicated years to its community.
The timing of Srinivasan’s flight was no coincidence. She was on the phone with a friend in Canada, finalizing her escape, when agents rang her doorbell—an intrusion that turned her apartment into a battleground. Leaving her cat with a friend, she booked a last-minute flight to Canada, a desperate bid for safety amid a climate of fear. Her departure came on the heels of another Columbia student’s ordeal: Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder, was detained after participating in the same protests, his fate serving as a grim warning to Srinivasan.
“Then on Friday was the first disappearance from the Columbia campus—Mahmoud Khalil is detained and disappeared—when I became extremely scared,” she told The Hindu, speaking from Canada.
The parallels are chilling, exposing a pattern of targeting students who align with pro-Palestine sentiments, regardless of evidence or context.
Far from being a hotbed of “terrorism,” the protests at Columbia represent a vibrant, morally grounded movement—one that Srinivasan, a scholar of urban spaces, might have understood as an organic response to oppression. Yet the U.S. government’s response has been to wield its immigration powers as a cudgel, stripping individuals like Srinivasan of their rights without transparency or recourse. The lack of clarity around the charges against her—she told The Hindu she is “not yet aware of what specific charges were brought against her”—lays bare the arbitrariness of this crackdown. Her fear of “retaliation,” as she expressed in the same interview, is a damning indictment of a system that punishes rather than protects.
