Columbia University’s PhD student Ranjani Srinivasan fled to Canada with her few belongings getting a whiff of ICE agents coming to arrest her as the tempers were running high following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil whom the administration is preparing to deport. Srinivasan decided to self-deport herself after she learned her student visa had been revoked.
Silicon Valley tech executive and an executive board member of the California Democratic Party, Rishi Kumar, who too has an Indian origin like Ranjani extended support to the Trump administration’s crackdown on Srinivasan and said that international students must remember that studying in the US is a privilege.
“Students are granted the opportunity to study in the U.S. based on specific conditions, rather than having an inherent or automatic entitlement to do so. Any violation will likely lead fo a retraction of the conditional privilege,” Kumar posted.
“Be mindful of your actions & speech. Supporting designated terrorist organizations can lead to visa revocation, as seen with Columbia’s Ranjani Srinivasan who self-deported after her visa was canceled.”
“Ranjani lost an amazing educational opportunity and this will be a huge setback for her. More importantly – a lesson for her and for the rest of the international students who are planning to study in the US.”
Who is Ranjani Srinivasan? What happened to her
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shared a video of Ranjani Srinivasan deporting herself from US and wrote: ‘I’m glad to see on of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers use the CBP Home app to self deport.” the CBP Home app is a mobile application developed by the US Customs and Border Protection t which allows individuals illegally staying in the country to express their “intent to deport”. After Srinivasan’s visa was canceled on March 5, for alleged support of Hamas, she used to app on March 11 to process her departure.
ICE agents came to her house twice — once she did not open the door, and the second time, she was not home. And the third time, she had already left the country. In an interview with the New York Times, after she left the US, she said she did not initially understand why her visa was revoked leading her university to withdraw her enrollment.
