Indian PhD candidate Ranjani Srinivasan who ‘self deported’ from US says she is ‘super afraid of retaliation’

An Indian PhD candidate at the prestigious Columbia University in the U.S., who was accused of being a “pro-Hamas sympathiser”, narrated that the U.S. immigration and customs enforcement agents raided her apartment on the campus housing and she had to seek help from immigration attorneys and has temporarily taken refuge in Canada. Then on Friday was the first disappearance from the Columbia campus — Mahmoud Khalil is detained and disappeared — when I became extremely scared,” said Ms. Srinivasan speaking from an undisclosed location in Canada saying that it took her several days to understand the extent that the U.S. authorities would go to deport her. Ms. Srinivasan said that last Sunday evening, her service as a Teaching Assistant and her I20 visa were terminated and she was “disenrolled” following which she had 15 days grace period to leave the country. I was doing my research near Bengaluru during that time,” said Ms. Srinivasan, adding that official search warrants “accused Columbia of harbouring illegal aliens. I do feel like that if it can happen to someone who does not have the markings of someone who is usually targeted, then it could really happen to anyone with an F1 visa as the University is supposed to protect us as in a way we are all strangers in a foreign land,” said Ms. Srinivasan seeking help from the Government of India to support her in getting the F1 visa so that she could complete her PhD thesis.