Cornell University is reneging on its pledge to help two graduate students avoid immigration detention by threatening to cut their funding if they don’t return to the United States, where the Trump administration has targeted them for possible deportation over their participation in a pro-Palestine protest. 

The Ivy League university had previously told Momodou Taal and Amandla Thomas-Johnson that they could finish their degrees with funding abroad, according to both Taal and Cornell’s graduate student union. After the Trump administration began to pursue both students in March 2025, Taal and Thomas-Johnson fled to Cairo and planned to complete their studies there. Taal’s attorney said the students are not sure if there’s a deportation order against them, but Homeland Security Investigations, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement intelligence division, has launched inquiries concerning both of them, and Taal was ordered to appear at an ICE office last year. The students believe they would likely be detained by immigration authorities upon return to the U.S.

Now, the school says the two students must teach on campus in Ithaca, New York, this fall or lose their funding.

“Either they knew I can’t come back, which is probably most likely, or they actually want me to come back and get arrested on arrival,” Taal told The Intercept in an interview. “Because of my Palestine activism, I’ve been treated even differently than people who are in similar circumstances.” 

The school has previously worked with other students experiencing visa issues to continue their studies abroad with funding, noted Taal and Ewa Nizalowska, president of the Cornell graduate student union.

Cornell declined to comment on Taal and Thomas-Johnson’s cases, but in a written statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson called the idea that the university was targeting students for protest activity “untrue and unfounded.” The spokesperson added that “Cornell University remains deeply committed to helping international students continue making academic progress when they encounter visa or travel-related challenges.”

The Cornell funding is the sole source of financial support for Taal and Thomas-Johnson, they told The Intercept. Losing it would hurt their ability to pay for housing, food, healthcare, and other living expenses.

“I have no money. … I’m where I am because the cost of living is cheaper,” Thomas-Johnson said. “I go through day-to-day anxiety — how can I be expected to finish a Ph.D.?”

“If I don’t get funding, I’m going to be homeless,” Taal said. “I’m not going to be able to make rent.”

The Cornell spokesperson added that the students outside the U.S. can apply for fellowships for funding, but those opportunities for the coming semester were closed months ago, Taal said.

“If I don’t get funding, I’m going to be homeless.”

“Cornell knows full well that Momodou would be immediately detained and sent to one of the places where more people are dying than ever before, facing all sorts of abuse, simply for his speech,” said Eric Lee, a civil rights attorney representing Taal. “For the university to claim that they’re offering something fair is a level of cynicism which can only be deliberate by an institution with the experience of Cornell.”

In March 2025, Taal, a British and Gambian dual citizen, and Thomas-Johnson, also a British citizen, fled the country amid a rash of deportation cases in which the Trump administration was targeting international student activists who had been involved in campus protests against Israel’s genocide and apartheid of Palestinians. They were trying to avoid the treatment given to high-profile figures like Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madhawi. 

Taal and Thomas-Johsnon had taken part in a September 2024 protest that shut down a Cornell job fair where weapons manufacturers Boeing and L3Harris, which supply weapons to Israel, had booths. The pair of students were suspended for the incident and banned from campus with threat of possible expulsion, which would have exposed them to deportation.

After Trump took office in early 2025, Taal sued the administration over its executive order targeting pro-Palestine international students, arguing it denied activists’ First Amendment rights. Days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered Taal to surrender to authorities, and agents appeared at his student housing apartment. After a federal judge declined to block Taal’s deportation, Taal decided to leave the U.S. on his own to avoid ICE detention facilities known for their brutal living conditions. Thomas-Johnson followed suit, fleeing to Canada, then Switzerland, Senegal, and Ghana, before eventually joining Taal in Cairo. 

The Intercept’s reporting later revealed that leading up to their departures from the U.S., Google had secretly handed ICE agents the students’ Gmail account information and complied with a federal subpoena demanding their bank and credit card numbers.

“Given Cornell’s very positive relationship with the Trump administration, and its willingness to make all sorts of concessions to the attack on educational institutions, the question should be posed to them, whether such an agreement has been made about Momodou,” Lee said, referring to Taal’s funding options.

Last November, Cornell inked a deal with the administration to give the government $60 million and capitulate to the government’s inquiries into diversity initiatives and antisemitism in exchange for restoration of federal funding to the school. 

More recently, the Cornell chapter of a pro-Israel alumni group called Alums for Campus Fairness began circulating a mailer praising university President Michael Kotlikoff for taking “action to support Jewish students” and “meaningful action to address campus disruptions.” The mailer, reviewed by The Intercept, did not name Taal or Thomas-Johnson, but indirectly applauded “banning a leading agitator from returning to campus.” The Intercept found last year that a similar pro-Israel alumni group at Columbia had coordinated to arrest and deport pro-Palestine student protesters.

On June 10, Cornell’s graduate school administration sent Taal a letter about his funding options for the upcoming school year. According to the letter, reviewed by The Intercept, Taal could either return to campus and accept a teaching assistant position, apply to be in absentia and seek external funding like a fellowship, forfeit funding and pay tuition on his own, or take a leave of absence.

“Our department funding sources are limited to teaching assistantships,” the letter reads. “This requires you to be on campus in Ithaca, NY to assist with classes. The College of Arts and Sciences restricts classes to being taught in person and on campus. Online courses are not permitted.”

Taal said he was planning to finish his dissertation by spring 2027. He received his most recent stipend from the school in May, and under normal funding circumstances, he would have gotten another stipend this month. 

Taal said he had previously taught a freshman writing seminar via Zoom earlier during his program due to unrelated visa issues and questioned why the university could not accommodate the same. His 2022 acceptance letter to Cornell, reviewed by The Intercept, shows annual funding of $67,000 would be guaranteed for the first five years of his program. Taal is in the fifth year of his program in the Africana Studies department. Emails with his department from March, also reviewed by The Intercept, showed discussions about committing to “future funding.” 

Cornell extended a similar offer to Thomas-Johnson, who is in his sixth year of the program: He could continue to receive funding by teaching several courses in his department of Literatures in English, also on campus. Even after he further explained his immigration situation and danger of returning to the U.S., he said the university doubled down on the in-person requirement.

Thomas-Johnson and Taal both said their departments and faculty have been accommodating and supportive about their situations and suggested the funding decision likely came from the university administration.  

The graduate student union filed grievances alleging the offers breach their collective bargaining agreement with the university. At a meeting, Cornell administrators told the union the university did not have the obligation to fund international students who are facing visa issues, Nizalowska said. 

The policy was a “clear reversal,” Nizalowska told The Intercept. Last year, she said a Cornell administrator told the union that individual arrangements were being made to ensure that graduate students with visa issues or difficulty returning to the U.S. could complete their degrees remotely with continued funding from the school. 

“We know that it’s no coincidence that Momodou and Amandla are the first two grads to be impacted by this policy change, as two grads who dared to speak out against Cornell’s complicity in the genocide in Palestine, as further exemplified by Cornell’s deal with Trump,” she said. “But we know that many more grads will be impacted by Cornell’s refusal to fund grads who are stuck abroad, whether or not they have been involved in protests against the genocide in Palestine.”

The Cornell spokesperson denied that it was in violation of any policy or had engaged in political targeting. “Cornell’s approach to graduate student funding is longstanding, and there has been no change in, or deviation from, university policy,” the spokesperson wrote. “Graduate funding decisions are unrelated to [protest] activity or to the November 2025 agreement between Cornell and the federal government.”

Taal has considered returning to Gambia, where he has family, but he said unstable internet and electricity access would make his research difficult. He and Thomas-Johnson have their reservations about relocating to Britain, where both have relatives, because of that government’s similar targeting of pro-Palestine activists. 

Earlier this year, Taal reported being detained by British authorities for six hours upon landing at London’s Heathrow airport. While he was in custody, officers confiscated his phone and laptop, took his DNA, and questioned him about “the mosque I attended growing up, the Islamic teachers I followed,” and about whether he had read Karl Marx.

The detention came days after United Nations Special Rapporteurs appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council wrote a letter to Cornell President Kotlikoff, warning him of “serious concern over the reported human rights violations against Mr. Taal and Mr. Thomas-Johnson” over the school’s handling of their disciplinary cases related to the 2024 protest. 

“They’re trying to continue making an example out of me and Momodou for our political choices,” Thomas-Johnson said. “It’s easy for them to sideline us for what we stand for and who we are.”