The first knock at the door came eight days ago, on a Friday morning.
Three federal immigration agents showed up at a Columbia University apartment searching for Ranjani Srinivasan, who had recently learned her student visa had been revoked. Ms. Srinivasan, an international student from India, did not open the door.
She was not home when the agents showed up again the next night, just hours before a former Columbia student living in campus housing, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained, roiling the university. Ms. Srinivasan packed a few belongings, left her cat behind with a friend and jumped on a flight to Canada at LaGuardia Airport.
When the agents returned a third time, this past Thursday night, and entered her apartment with a judicial warrant, she was gone.
Welcome to Canada, Ranjani Srinivasan. Let’s hope other targets of political oppression take your same path.
We’ll take her. Looks like political asylum from the US is now a credible thing.
I doubt there was one, given ICE’s recent behaviour, but did they give even the slightest reason why her student visa has been revoked? She was a fulbright scholar PhD student. Not exactly the supposedly “dangerous” immigrant the nazis always invent.
This is insanity. I’m glad she’s safe here in Canada and will be granted status to stay and complete her PhD that she’s almost done. It sounds like Srinivasan is the kind of person we want to welcome here: intelligent, hard working, slides with justice.
I hope Canada will continue to be a safe place for people who work hard for a better life not just for themselves, but others also.
The US will experience a brain-drain, and Canada is going to be most often the recipient.
Ms. Srinivasan, a Fulbright recipient who was pursuing a doctoral degree in urban planning
I hope a prof in some Canadian university makes this bright woman an offer to continue her PhD here.
Headline seems a bit off. The Colombian student - Mahmoud Khalil - was arrested earlier. The one who fled to Canada was a student from India whose visa had similarly been cancelled
Columbia university. Khalil is Algerian.
Welp, now we have political refugees.
The walls are to keep us in
What she did is what everyone in her situation should do - not just if your visa is revoked, but if you are one of the target minorities.
It’s hard to get your life turned upside down and leave your comfort overnight, and very unfair. But you don’t want to let them make the first move on you.
As hard as leaving everything behind feels, the chance of being imprisoned and being powerless in case democracy falls and tyranny begins is far, far worse.
Many people who chose not to flee newly-formed totalitarian regimes lived to regret that choice dearly. As those who didn’t have the choice to begin with.
Escape to safety, then denounce and seek justice and restitution. Safety first, always.
I’ll be joining y’all permanently very soon (through legal means). I live close enough that my community extends into Canada and my partner and I have spent lots of time there. I’m excited to see my friends and community again, and to visit all my favorite spots.
But it’s hard, not gonna lie. It’s very, very, very hard. My partner and I are at the point where we have bugout bags ready to go. We’ve also been grieving everything and everyone we’re leaving behind
Welcome to Canada. Thank you for seeing us as a friendly state. Anyone in America feeling the crunch from the fascist leadership because of who they are or what they stand for should feel welcome here and know that we will listen to your story and do what we can to help you.
I mean the situation here ain’t too great for Indian students either.
There’s a lot of racists all around, and especially there’s a lot of racism towards young Indians.
Sure and why is that? Our government allowed to many people in to fast and the vast majority of them are Indian.
Orrr… Orrr hear me out. They haven’t been building enough homes.
Their issues are with rich NIMBY greedy people who bribe and pressure and are politicians.
The difference is the racism is state sanctioned in the US.
Running into a racist troglodyte on the street is never going to be the same as being thrown in a detention center because you did ‘free speech’ wrong and are the wrong skin tone.
I agree with you. However 12 days in detention would prove it’s even a bit more over the top south of the border. this young woman felt it was so much safer she fled law enforcement to come to a country with extradition treaties that is not her home. That’s gotta say something as well.
If all of us flee to Canada, there will be no one left to fight back.
We love you for welcoming those of us who can’t stay. But someone has to.
We don’t have the housing to take everyone yet. But we will gladly help those most in need and those that can help build up Canada to accept more.
That’s for the citizens who aren’t going to get their visas or green cards revoked to do. Otherwise, people need to take care of themselves, first and foremost.
Fight back? Prove it. I dare you.
Maybe they can hold up some little round signs.
Ah, McCarthyism rears its disgusting head. “Oh, you were in the vicinity of people demanding Palestinians not be killed? You must be a terrorist!”
This is far beyond McCarthy. This is beyond fascism. IF historians are able to write about these times, a new word, more full of horrific connotations than even that of Nazism will need be created.
Red hats are the new brown shirts
No. This is literally what happened in Nazi Germany, and to the millions of people sent to the gulags in the USSR. It happened to Japanese Americans during WW2.
The problem isn’t the words we use are insufficient. The problem is people are so uneducated and brainwashed they no longer understand what those words mean. The fascist propaganda machine has been normalizing these words for decades.
We already have few candidate words. Trumpers. MAGAts. Yall’Qaida …
