How a Columbia student’s arrest and a mayor’s intervention collided in a single Oval Office meeting
When Campus Safety and Federal Power Collide
The Hill’s February 26, 2026 coverage of the Mamdani-Trump White House meeting focused significantly on the immigration enforcement dimension of the day’s events — specifically, the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of Columbia University student Elmina Aghayeva at her campus residential building, and Mamdani’s successful intervention to secure her release from the Oval Office.
For The Hill, a publication that covers the intersection of policy and politics in Washington with particular attention to how federal decisions affect communities across the country, the Aghayeva case represented a flashpoint in an ongoing confrontation between the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda and the institutions of American higher education.
The Pattern of Campus Enforcement Actions
Aghayeva’s detention on February 26 was not an isolated event. It occurred against the backdrop of a sustained pattern of federal immigration enforcement actions targeting university students, particularly at institutions that had been sites of campus activism in 2024 and 2025. Columbia University became one of the most prominent such institutions after its campus protests drew national attention and, subsequently, federal scrutiny.
The Hill and other outlets have tracked the expansion of DHS and ICE operations into university settings under the Trump administration. The legal framework for such actions is contested. Universities have long maintained policies limiting law enforcement access to campus spaces, particularly residential buildings, based on principles of institutional autonomy and Fourth Amendment protections. Columbia’s acting president publicly stated that DHS agents used “misrepresentations to gain entry to the building” — an allegation that, if accurate, would represent a significant due process violation.
Civil liberties organizations have been documenting these enforcement patterns. The ACLU’s immigrant rights resources include guidance specifically for university students on their rights when approached by immigration enforcement agents. The American Association of University Professors has also published statements on the threat that federal enforcement actions pose to academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
Mamdani’s Intervention: What It Reveals About Power
The most striking aspect of the Aghayeva case, from The Hill’s policy perspective, is what it reveals about the nature of executive power and the role of personal relationships in outcomes that should be governed by law. A Columbia University student was detained by federal agents. She was released not through a legal challenge, not through a court order, not through the application of a consistent policy, but because the mayor of New York City happened to be in the Oval Office that afternoon and raised her case directly with the president.
Trump then called Mamdani personally to confirm her imminent release. She was freed within hours.
That sequence is both impressive and troubling. It is impressive because it produced a real result for a real person who needed help. It is troubling because it illustrates the arbitrariness of an enforcement system in which the outcome for a detained student depends not on the application of consistent legal standards but on whether an advocate with direct presidential access is available at the right moment.
Mamdani also handed Trump a list of four additional detained students and asked the president to consider dismissing their cases. As of the end of February 26, the status of those cases had not been publicly resolved. Those four students had no Oval Office advocate actively in the room.
The Broader Policy Question
The Hill’s coverage of the Mamdani-Trump meeting naturally opens into the broader policy question: what are the rules governing federal immigration enforcement on university campuses, and who is responsible for enforcing them?
The Trump administration has argued that immigration enforcement is a federal prerogative that cannot be limited by state or local authorities or by institutional policies. Universities have argued that their residential and educational spaces have traditional protections from law enforcement intrusion that require warrants and honest representation of authority. These competing claims have not been fully adjudicated, and the pace of enforcement actions has outrun the pace of legal resolution.
Congress has not yet passed legislation specifically governing immigration enforcement on university campuses, leaving the field to executive interpretation and case-by-case court decisions. The National Immigration Law Center tracks relevant litigation and policy developments that affect students and universities navigating this uncertain legal environment.
What Advocacy Journalism Demands Here
The Aghayeva story demands that reporting go beyond the day’s dramatic resolution to the systemic questions it raises. One student was released because a mayor was in the right room at the right time. Four other students’ cases remained unresolved. Thousands of immigrant students at universities across the country face the same enforcement environment without any of the institutional access that Mamdani deployed on February 26.
The Hill’s coverage provides a platform for the policy argument that personal advocacy, however effective, is not a substitute for systemic protection. What immigration advocates and civil liberties organizations are calling for is not more mayors with White House access — it is a legal framework that guarantees due process for all students regardless of who advocates for them or when.
That argument does not diminish what Mamdani accomplished on February 26. It contextualizes it within the larger work that remains — work that requires legislative action, judicial enforcement, and institutional commitments that outlast any single mayoral administration or presidential term.
