FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 5, 2025

MEDIA CONTACTS:
 

CLEAR: cunyclear@law.cuny.edu 

Human Rights First: Press@HumanRightsFirst.org 

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the SF Bay Area: Raya Steier, rsteier@lccrsf.org, c:530-723-2426 

Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP: Redmond Haskins, redmondhaskins86@gmail.com c: 929-441-2384 

***PRESS RELEASE***

NEW YORK – Following Judge Naomi Buchwald’s ruling this afternoon granting plaintiff’s preliminary injunction in Yunseo Chung v. Trump, rejecting the government’s claim that it had grounds to detain Columbia University student and peaceful protester Yunseo Chung, counsel for Ms. Chung issued the following statements: 

“Today’s decision affirms a basic principle: the government cannot punish someone for their beliefs or their speech,” said Sonya Levitova of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “The court made clear that Yunseo cannot be detained or deported for exercising her constitutional rights. We will continue fighting to ensure that Yunseo — a twenty-one-year-old college student standing up for Palestinian human rights — can live, learn, and thrive without fear.” 

“The court rightly recognized that the government has no legitimate purpose in seeking to arrest and detain Ms. Chung,” said Naz Ahmad, co-director of CLEAR. “Instead, the court saw the government’s maneuverings for what they are, an attempt to silence Ms. Chung for her speech by arresting her, detaining her far from her community and family. Our constitution does not permit such a result.”  

“The administration keeps saying that the U.S. is awash in crime, while it spends a massive amount of time and money trying to effectuate the unconstitutional arrest of a college student who has done nothing wrong,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, Special Counsel with Human Rights First. “It’s remarkable that we need federal judges to stop that kind of wasteful illegality.” 

“Enabling the Trump administration to wield detention and deportation in the way the Trump administration intends, as a sword of Damocles over all noncitizens who might dare to engage in political speech, is anathema to the free exchange of ideas. We are pleased to be a step closer to vindicating Yunseo’s First Amendment rights,” said Jordan Wells, Program Director of Immigrant Justice at Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. 

“The administration has been playing a game of Constitutional rights keep-away: arguing that it could prevent the court from entering an order to stop its lawless effort to retaliate against Ms. Chung for her speech because ICE had not yet kidnapped her—at which point it would try to disappear her to Louisiana or Texas—while rejecting the Court’s efforts to allow both sides to have their day in court in an orderly fashion,” said Nathan Yaffe of the Law Office of Matthew Bray. “Today, the Court said enough is enough, decisively rejecting that the administration has any legitimate interest in arresting Ms. Chung. This is the only just result.” 

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Ms. Chung is represented by: CLEAR, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, Human Rights First, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Law Office of Matthew Bray, and Jonathan Hafetz.