A Cornell University graduate student whose visa was revoked after he was involved in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its actions against pro-Palestinian student protesters announced Monday that he will be leaving the United States voluntarily.
Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia, said on X that made the decision to leave the country "free and with my head held high."
"Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs," Taal wrote. "I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted. Weighing up these options, I took the decision to leave on my own terms."
Taal, 31, said it was not the outcome he wanted after he sued the Trump administration last month along with two U.S. citizens — a Cornell professor and a Ph.D. student — challenging its executive orders to “combat anti-semitism” on college campuses and expel foreign nationals who the administration says pose national security threats.
In the lawsuit, Taal and the other plaintiffs argued that the administration’s sweeping orders “unconstitutionally silenced Plaintiffs and chilled protected expression, prohibiting them from speaking, hearing, or engaging with viewpoints critical of the U.S. government or the government of Israel, under threat of criminal prosecution or deportation.”
The administration has revoked at least 300 student visas of foreign-born people, most of whom were part of the pro-Palestinian movement that swept campuses last year, including Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk. A green card-holder, Mahmoud Khalil, was also detained and has been held in Louisiana since his March 8 arrest.
Taal said he decided to sue the Trump administration hoping it would protect him and others in similar situations. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the Justice Department asked Taal to surrender to immigration authorities.
Taal and his lawyer, Eric Lee, said the administration sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to his home, revoked his student visa and took actions to prevent the lawsuit from going to court. According to Lee, unidentified authorities arrived outside Taal’s student apartment building and asked others about him before staff members asked them to leave. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Taal said that the first motion of the lawsuit was denied and that he was going to submit a second briefing to keep him out of detention while the lawsuit was in progress. The lawsuit was dismissed Monday night on behalf of all three plaintiffs following Taal's announcement, Lee told NBC News.
"This is of course not the outcome I had wanted going into this, but we are facing a government that has no respect for the judiciary or for the rule of the law," Taal wrote on X.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Taal’s statement and the suit’s being dropped.
Taal ended his post with a warning that the administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists sets a dangerous precedent.
"The repression of Palestinian solidarity is now being used to wage a wholesale attack on any form of expression that challenges oppressive and exploitative relations in the U.S.," he wrote.
