Earlier this month, while hunting for Columbia University students to deport over their ties to Gaza protests, the Trump administration convinced a federal judge to sign off on search warrants for two students’ dorm rooms — then raided the residences with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

As details about the warrants have emerged, however, so have allegations that federal agents misled the court and secured the warrants under “false pretenses,” as one of the students whose room was searched, Yunseo Chung, claimed in a lawsuit challenging her deportation.

The warrants were predicated on probable cause that Columbia was “harboring” students who were in the country illegally, court filings indicate. Chung, however, is a lawful permanent resident, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s efforts to deport her based on her arrest and citation at a Gaza sit-in. She has lived in the U.S. since she was 7 years old.

“The idea that they went before a federal magistrate judge and said, ‘We have to search Ms. Chung’s residence for evidence of Columbia harboring her’ — that shows they’re willing to lie to a judge,” said Nathan Yaffe, an immigration attorney.

Yaffe represents both Chung and the other Columbia student who was targeted by the search warrants, Ranjani Srinivasan, who left the country in mid-March.

Most of the materials relating to the search warrants remain under seal in federal court, and Columbia declined to comment on them, citing student privacy protections. ICE did not respond to The Intercept’s questions about the warrants.

“If the government falsified information to get the warrant, that is its own bundle of serious problems,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, an attorney at Human Rights First who also represents Chung. “But even if not, the basis for this entire operation is constitutionally invalid.”

“Harboring and Concealing”?

The search warrants served on Columbia first became public through a late-night statement from the university on March 13, just five days after the jarring arrest of Mahmoud Khalil in the lobby of his Columbia apartment building. The school did not include the targeted students’ names, the specific buildings, or the government’s legal justification for searching them.

“I am writing heartbroken to inform you that we had federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two University residences tonight,” Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong wrote in her statement. Armstrong emphasized that university protocol “requires that law enforcement have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas” — which ICE satisfied by serving warrants signed by a federal magistrate judge.

“The University is obligated to comply with the law,” Armstrong wrote. “No one was arrested or........

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