News- World: Momodou Taal, a British-Gambian PhD student whose visa was revoked due to his involvement in pro-Palestine activism, says he fled the United States due to safety concerns, amid the “lawlessness” of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Taal, the Cornell University graduate student who faced deportation after his visa was revoked, announced on Monday that he would leave the US voluntarily after the administration sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to his home and took actions to prevent his lawsuit against the Trump administration from going to court.

“The decision to leave was very abrupt,” Taal said at Middle East Eye's Big Picture Podcast this week. “It became increasingly clear to me that even with a court order, my safety was not going to be guaranteed.”

Taal had sued the administration over its actions against pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters, and the case was dropped on Monday.

“I could not walk around New York City with my head held high and not have the fear of being bungled into an unmarked vehicle.”

“I kept seeing the increasing lawlessness of the Trump administration,” Taal added.

This comes as the US continues with its crackdown on pro-Palestine activism.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested last week in Somerville, Massachusetts. According to a statement from the university's president, the arrest was linked to her pro-Palestine views expressed in a co-authored article.

Also last month, federal authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and a Palestinian activist who helped organize campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza across the US last year.

Khalil has been facing deportation despite being a legal permanent resident in the US.

Earlier, the Department of Homeland Security arrested Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student who had taken part in protests at Columbia University, for allegedly overstaying her F-1 student visa.

‘Keep your visas’

During the interview, Taal reflected on watching the footage of Ozturk’s detention while in hiding in Ithaca, New York, describing the psychological toll he endured.

“I was in captivity. I had not seen sunlight for two and a half weeks. I was in hiding,” he said.

“I hear a loud bang and I’m thinking, ‘ok they’re here to get me’…my sleep was terrible in those two and a half weeks,” he said.

Taal also commented on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent remarks in which he said students who took part in anti-Israel protests had “no right to a student visa” and that Washington was within its right to revoke them because they would never have been granted had the US known the students’ views on Israel.

“I did intend to study and finish my PhD at Cornell University. I did not also intend…anticipate, a genocide to start. I didn’t intend…anticipate that the US would not only be complicit, but arm a genocide,” Taal said.

“If the condition of your visa is now conditional on having no moral conscience, then the US can keep their visas…they will continue to lose the best people.”

Since becoming secretary of state in late January, Rubio has cancelled over 300 visas, many of them belonging to students, having personally signed off on every visa revocation.

Taal reiterated that he has no regrets in taking part in the anti-genocide protests.

“I think Zionism has lost,” he said. “I can never see it be salvaged. Young people particularly understand what Zionism is…fundamentally we have won the ideological struggle and it's only a matter of time until we win the material one.”

Taal, who refrains from disclosing his whereabouts over safety concerns, stressed that the actions taken by the Trump administration against student visa holders are concerning for all Americans because they pose a threat to freedom of expression and send a message about foreign influence in the US.

“You probably have more right to critique the US than Israel in the US. Anyone in the US should be deeply concerned about that. I thought Maga was ‘Make America Great Again,’ not Israel first”, he said.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance movement waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long violence against Palestinians. Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed over 50,000 Palestinians.

Source: Press TV