New York
U.S. Arrests 2nd Person Tied to Pro-Palestinian Protests at Columbia
A second person who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University has been arrested by U.S. immigration agents, after overstaying a student visa, federal officials said on Friday, the latest turn in the crisis engulfing the Ivy League institution.
The person, identified by the authorities as Leqaa Kordia, is Palestinian and from the West Bank. She was arrested in Newark on Thursday, officials said. Her student visa was terminated in January 2022, and she was arrested by the New York City police last April for her role in a campus demonstration, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement.
The agency also released a video on Friday that it said showed a Columbia student, identified as Ranjani Srinivasan, preparing to enter Canada after her student visa was revoked.
The announcements, by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reflected an escalation of the Trump administration’s focus on Columbia, where protests over the war in Gaza last year ignited a national debate over free speech and antisemitism, and prompted similar demonstrations at dozens of other campuses.
The actions came during a tumultuous week at the university, which has experienced a series of escalating controversies since the arrest by federal immigration agents last weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and prominent figure in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.
On Friday, more than 200 students gathered outside Columbia’s main campus gates to protest the university’s handling of Mr. Khalil’s arrest. Demonstrators wore kaffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags and carried banners with slogans like “Free Mahmoud,” “I.C.E. off our campuses” and “Columbia You Can’t Hide.”
The protest unfolded less than 24 hours after homeland security agents entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms. No one was detained and nothing was taken, according to the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong.
Social media posts by Ms. Noem on Friday appeared to signal that Columbia continued to be a subject of Trump administration scrutiny.
Ms. Noem posted a video on the social media platform X that appeared to show a woman walking through LaGuardia Airport with a small suitcase. Ms. Noem identified the woman as Ms. Srinivasan and said she had used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to notify the government of her intention to self-deport. Ms. Srinivasan’s dorm room was one of those searched, according to her lawyer and roommate.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America,” Ms. Noem said in a statement.
Nathan Yaffe, a member of Ms. Srinivasan’s legal team, confirmed in a statement that federal agents had entered her dorm room on Thursday in an effort to detain her or seek information about her whereabouts. A lawyer for Ms. Kordia could not be immediately identified.
The past week has been fraught with crisis on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. The Trump administration demanded on Thursday that the university make far-reaching changes to its student discipline and admissions policies before any negotiations regarding the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts could begin.
Federal officials wrote in a letter that the university had a week to formalize its definition of antisemitism, ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and put the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.”
The government said the moves were necessary because of what they described as Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. Officials from three government agencies wrote that Columbia “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.”
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said during a speech at the Justice Department on Friday that the administration was investigating whether incidents on campus have violated civil rights protections or federal terrorism laws.
“This is long overdue,” Mr. Blanche said.
But civil liberties advocates argued that the government’s demands would not only erode free speech and academic freedom at Columbia but would have a chilling effect on universities across the country. Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, said in a statement that the “subjugation of universities to official power is a hallmark of autocracy.”
Others were particularly concerned by the demand that the university adopt a definition of antisemitism that could penalize those who are critical of Israel.
Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs at the free speech and legal defense group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called the letter “a blueprint to supercharge censorship at America’s colleges and universities.”
“Colleges across the country are likely reading this letter this morning and thinking they better censor speech — or they’re next,” Mr. Coward said in a statement.
A university spokeswoman said Thursday evening that Columbia was “reviewing the letter” from the government agencies. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus,” she said.
After the dorm search, Ms. Armstrong said in a note to students and staff members late Thursday that she was “heartbroken” over the development, and that Columbia was making every effort to ensure the safety of its students, faculty and staff.
In a separate action on Thursday, Columbia announced a range of disciplinary actions against students who occupied a campus building last spring, including expulsions and suspensions, among the steps that Trump administration officials had called for in their letter.
The punishments included “multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions,” the university said in a statement. It was unclear how many students had been punished.
Among those expelled was Grant Miner, a Jewish graduate student who was part of a student coalition that has called for Columbia to divest from companies connected to Israel, according to the student workers’ union at the university, which Mr. Miner leads.
The union has accused the university of targeting its members. A Columbia spokeswoman said Friday evening that it was “unfortunate” that the group was trying to “conflate student discipline with employment matters,” and that the accusation was false.
Mr. Miner, a doctoral student in the English and comparative literature department, said in a statement that “this is an egregious attempt to break the union and squash the movement against genocide in Palestine.”
“We will not be intimidated on either front,” he said.
Anvee Bhutani, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Hamed Aleaziz, Sharla Steinman and Katherine Rosman contributed reporting.
New York
Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal
“I just thought, please don’t let this be how my life ends. I’m not ready to die. When we landed, it was a very rough landing. Like we landed and the plane jolted back up, and that caught a lot of passengers off guard. Everyone kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then you hear the pilot braking, and it was like just this grinding sound.” “Everybody was shocked everywhere. There was — there’s people screaming. The plane just veered off course. I mean, it was just — it all happened so quickly, but it all felt just like a very dire situation.” “Oh, God. Oh my goodness. That’s crazy.” “People were bleeding from their nose, cuts and scrapes. I saw black eyes, all different types of facial contusions, bruising and bleeding. I was sitting by the exit door, and I opened the exit door. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the survivors. Nobody was pushing, shoving, ‘I got to get out first.’” “The plane actually tipped back as we were leaving, as people were getting off the plane. That was when the nose kind of fell off the front of the plane, and the whole plane kind of went up to what we’d seen in all the pictures of the plane’s nose in the air.” And there was no slide when we got out. A lot of us were jumping off of the airplane wing to get down. And when I got out and I saw that the front of the plane, how destroyed it was, I just was — I was in shock.” “It was only really when I was outside of the plane, looking back at the plane, and I had seen what had happened to the cockpit, and then just like this sense of dread overcame me, where I was just like, wow, a lot of people might have just been pretty badly hurt.” “I’m grateful to the pilots who were so courageous and brave, and acted swiftly, and they saved our lives. And if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to come home to my family. I’m forever indebted to them. They’re my heroes.”
New York
Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead
new video loaded: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead
By Axel Boada and Monika Cvorak
March 23, 2026
New York
How a Family of 3 Lives on $500,000 on the Upper West Side
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Rent is not the largest monthly expense for Anala Gossai and Brendon O’Leary, a couple who live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That would be child care.
They spend $4,200 each month on day care for their 1-year-old son, Zeno.
“We really liked the center,” Ms. Gossai, 37, said. “Neighbors in our building love it. It’s actually pretty middle of the road for cost. Some were even more expensive.”
The rent for their one-bedroom apartment is $3,900 per month. Space is tight, but the location is priceless.
“We’re right across from Central Park,” she said. “We can walk to the subway and the American Museum of Natural History.”
‘Middle Class’ in Manhattan
Ms. Gossai, a data scientist, and her husband, 38, a software engineer, met in graduate school. Their household income is roughly $500,000 per year. While they make a good living, they try to be frugal and are saving money to buy an apartment.
They moved into their roughly 800-square-foot rental eight years ago when it was just them and their dog, Peabody, a Maltese poodle. Now their son’s crib is steps away from their bed. They installed a curtain between the bed and the crib to keep the light out.
Like many couples, they have discussed leaving the city.
“When we talk about the possibility of moving to the suburbs, we both really dread it,” Mr. O’Leary said. “I don’t like to drive. Anala doesn’t drive. I feel like we’d be stuck. We really value being able to walk everywhere.”
Ms. Gossai is from Toronto, and Mr. O’Leary is from Massachusetts. In New York City, wealth is often viewed in relation to your neighbors, and many of theirs make more money. The Upper West Side has the sixth-highest median income of any neighborhood in the city, according to the N.Y.U. Furman Center.
“I think we’re middle class for this area,” Mr. O’Leary said. “We’re doing OK.”
The couple tries to save about $10,000 each month to put toward an apartment or for an emergency. They prioritize memberships to the Central Park Zoo at $160 per year and the American Museum of Natural History at $180 per year.
Their son likes the museum’s butterflies exhibit and the “Invisible Worlds” light show, which Mr. O’Leary said felt like a “baby rave.”
Ordering Diapers Online
The cost of having a young child is their top expense. But they hope that relief is on the horizon and that Zeno can attend a free prekindergarten program when he turns 4.
For now, they rely on online shopping for all sorts of baby supplies. The family spent roughly $9,000 on purchases over the last year, including formula and diapers. That included about $730 for toys and games.
Ms. Gossai said one of her favorite purchases was a pack of hundreds of cheap stickers.
“They are good bribes to get him into his stroller,” she said. “Six dollars for stickers was extremely worth it.”
They splurge on some items like drop-off laundry service, which costs about $150 a month. It feels like a luxury instead of doing it themselves in the basement.
Keeping track of baby socks “completely broke my mind,” Ms. Gossai said.
Their grocery bills are about $900 per month, mostly spent at Trader Joe’s and Fairway. Mr. O’Leary is in charge of cooking and tries to make dinner at home twice a week.
They spend about $500 per month on eating out and food delivery. A favorite is Jacob’s Pickles, a comfort food restaurant where they order the meatloaf and potatoes.
Saving on Vacations and Transportation
Before Zeno, the couple spent thousands of dollars on vacations to Switzerland and Oregon. Now, trips are mainly to visit family.
Mr. O’Leary takes the subway to work at an entertainment company. Ms. Gossai mostly works from home for a health care company. They rarely spend money on taxis or car services.
“I’ll only take an Uber when I’m going to LaGuardia Airport,” Mr. O’Leary said.
Care for their dog is about $370 per month, including doggie day care, grooming and veterinarian costs. Peabody is getting older and the basket under the family’s stroller doubles as a shuttle for him.
They love their neighborhood and the community of new parents they have met. Still, they dream of having a second bedroom for their son and a second bathroom.
Their kitchen is cramped with no sunlight. So they put a grow light and plants above the refrigerator to brighten the room.
Since they share a room with their son, he often wakes them up around 5 a.m.
“In the sweetest and most adorable way,” Ms. Gossai said.
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