A British-Gambian Ph.D. student at Cornell University who had faced possible deportation after participating in pro-Palestinian protests said on Monday that he had left the United States.
The student, Momodou Taal, who had been suspended by the university several times, including for participating in what it said was an unruly protest, is one of at least nine international students that the Trump administration has sought to remove from the country because of activities it calls antisemitic.
Mr. Taal had not been detained, unlike some of the other students, and had filed a suit attempting to block the legal proceedings against him.
In a statement on the social media platform X, Mr. Taal indicated that he had left the country. “I took the decision to leave the United States, free and with my head held high,” Mr. Taal wrote. He said that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel had come to his home and revoked his visa. There was no immediate reply from the agency to a request for comment.
“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favorable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” he said in the statement. He warned that others were also at risk and renewed his support for Palestinians.
Mr. Taal had been one of the leaders of a tent protest on the campus lawn at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., in which students urged the university to divest its holdings in companies that they said supported Israel’s military campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza. On Oct. 7, 2023, the day that Hamas attacked Israel and set off the war, he wrote online, “Glory to the Resistance.”
After returning to office in January, President Trump signed an executive order saying that the United States would use “all available and appropriate legal tools” to “remove” aliens who engage in “unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
Last month, ICE personnel detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student. They have also sought others, including Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7.
Officials in the Trump administration have argued in several cases that a “visa is a privilege, not a right.” Civil rights advocates have called the deportation effort one of the biggest assaults on free speech in the United States in decades.
Mr. Taal, who holds joint British and Gambian citizenship, was in the United States on a student visa. He had been working toward a Ph.D. in Africana studies.
