The Trump administration has revoked the visa of Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student who has called for the destruction of the United States, celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attacks, claimed to take his “cue from the armed resistance in Palestine,” and said “every single Zionist is a sick sick individual,” the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Momodou Taal, a British and Gambian dual national, began studying at Cornell in 2022 on an F-1 student visa, which he no longer holds, according to a State Department official.
Taal’s lawyers confirmed in a court filing that the administration asked Taal to surrender to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at a facility in Syracuse, N.Y., for deportation proceedings. The request came in an early-morning email from the Department of Justice on Friday, the filing shows.
“ICE invites Mr. Taal and his counsel to appear in-person at the HSI Office in Syracuse at a mutually agreeable time for personal service of the NTA and for Mr. Taal to surrender to ICE custody,” wrote DOJ attorney Ethan Kanter in the email. “NTA” refers to a notice to appear, an ICE document that begins removal proceedings against a foreign national.
Taal’s lawyers asked a federal judge to block the deportation actions on an emergency basis, arguing that Taal was being targeted for deportation because of a federal lawsuit he filed against President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for the revocation of visas given to foreign students who support terrorism.
Taal filed the lawsuit on Saturday, several days after the Trump administration started publicly revoking visas of foreign nationals linked to pro-Hamas activism.
In the lawsuit, Taal argued that the looming threat of deportation had a “chilling” effect on his freedom of speech and has “deprived” other Cornell students and professors of hearing his “ideas and suggestions.” He asked a judge to halt Trump’s executive order.
Taal sought to depict the government’s decision to revoke his visa as retaliation for his lawsuit. He said his associates had spotted law enforcement officials stationed near his home Wednesday morning, which he called an attempt “to detain me to prevent me from having my day in court.” An Israeli activist group flagged Taal to the Trump administration long before he filed his lawsuit, the Free Beacon reported.
After Taal released his statement on the law enforcement spotting, a few dozen activists showed up at Cornell to protest his potential deportation on Thursday.
“Hands off Momodou,” the group chanted, waving signs opposing “mass deportation.”
Taal has repeatedly advocated for the destruction of the United States and for terrorism against Israel.
While leading an anti-Israel campus demonstration last year, Taal called on his fellow student protesters to take their “cue from the armed resistance in Palestine.”
“We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he said.
Taal made a similar statement hours after the October 7 attacks, writing, “The dialect demands: That wherever you have oppression, you will find those who [are] fighting against it. Glory to the resistance!”
Taal posted similar statements online in 2022 as he applied for his student visa. In one post, he wrote, “The end of the US empire in our lifetime in sha Allah.” Months later, he celebrated receiving his student visa, writing, “Student Visa issued. We going to America baby! Alhamdulillah!” Shortly thereafter, he tweeted, “My hatred of the US empire knows no bound. Wallahi.”
Taal has continued to post anti-American comments from his perch at Cornell. Last summer, he said he would support any group that sought the destruction of the United States.
“When the enemy is US imperialism, then absolutely anyone the US calls an enemy is my friend,” he posted in July. “My hatred for US imperialism and the global system it reproduces knows no bounds,” he wrote one month prior. “At this point; any movement, nation, people who are working to decrease the impact and effects of US imperialism on the world has my support.”
While studying at Cornell, meanwhile, Taal took aim at “Zionist-Jewish students at Ivy League institutions.”
“Every single Zionist is a sick sick individual,” he tweeted in 2023. “And there can be no path forward except for the complete eradication of Zionism; materially and mentally.” In another tweet, Taal wrote, “Zionists are indeed the chosen people… Chosen for hell.”
In Taal’s lawsuit filed last weekend, he complained that the Trump administration’s executive order to expel pro-Hamas visa holders had forced him to withdraw from “public engagement” and thus “deprived” his friends “of their rights to listen” to his “ideas and suggestions,” the Free Beacon reported.
The suit names two other plaintiffs, Cornell professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi and graduate student Sriram Parasurama, both U.S. citizens, who have allegedly “been deprived of their rights to listen to Mr. Taal’s ideas and suggestions about planning peaceful protests and organizing educational meetings about the rights of the Palestinian people,” as well as his “political insights into the historical, political, and sociological roots of what they understand to be a genocide against the people of Palestine.”
“The loss of Mr. Taal’s voice in these spaces has diminished the richness and diversity of political dialogue within the community and has deprived the citizen-Plaintiffs of an important source of intellectual and organizing leadership,” the lawsuit goes on.
The lawsuit characterizes Taal’s activism as peaceful messages “in support of the Palestinian people” and does not mention his support for terrorists and anti-American movements.
Taal is being represented by Christopher Godshall-Bennett, a lawyer with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. His legal team didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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