Unis Resist Border Controls

Cornell University has become a global news pariah, following its horrific negligence and lack of any meaningful accountability after 7 of its students took part in a gruesome sexual assault.  While Cornell University is being rightfully questioned for its abhorrent handling of sexual violence on its campus, we must not forget how it has continued to target and harass two migrant pro-Palestine PhD researchers, Amandla Thomas-Johnson and Momodou Taal, who have lost their PhD funding for refusing to return to the United States. Cornell University has left them with no choice but to crowdfund the $25,000 each they need for the final leg of their research.

Cornell University is fully aware that Amandla and Momodou, cannot enter the United States without incurring the full weight of US state violence for their activism in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. Instead of allowing Amandla and Momodou to continue their funding obligations outside the US, Cornell University is weaponising their precarity as migrant students reliant on university funding to survive as they continue their research.

“If I don’t get funding, I’m going to be homeless,” Momodou has explicitly stated to The Intercept. At the same time, Amandla notes the psychological toll of this decision, commenting, “I go through day-to-day anxiety — how can I be expected to finish a Ph.D.

 
Cornell University is Complicit in Genocide & Border Oppression

Since 2025, Amandla and Momodou, who hold British citizenship, have been conducting their PhD research outside the United States. This is because they were forced to flee from the United States under the Trump Administration’s weaponisation of their student visas, or face U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention for their steadfast solidarity with Palestinian liberation as migrant Black Muslim students. 

At the start of the current genocide in Gaza, Amandla and Momodou played an active role on the Cornell University campus in standing in solidarity with Palestine and against US imperialism. Both Amandla and Momodou participated in the September 2024 protest against the presence of weapons manufacturers Boeing and L3Harris at a Cornell University careers fair. Because of their participation, Cornell University suspended Amandla and Momodou, barred them from campus, and threatened them with expulsion.

President Trump’s second term saw his administration employ ICE to wage a vendetta against US cities that provided sanctuary to undocumented migrants, against migrant students and especially those with precarious immigration status, who showed solidarity with Palestinian liberation and against the continued US-Israel war in Iran. Currently, 400,000  migrants, including those with US citizenship and green card holders, have found themselves in ICE detention.

Under this repression, Momodou, along with another Cornell University PhD student, Sriram Parasurama, and Professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi, launched a legal challenge against the Trump administration’s executive order signed in January 2025, supposedly to combat antisemitism on college campuses. In reality, the intended purpose was to stifle and prevent Palestine solidarity activism and further erode anti-imperial free speech within US universities. An aspect of the executive order was intended to deport non-citizen students and foreign nationals involved in pro-Palestine solidarity, couched by the Trump administration as being “Hamas sympathisers” or participants in “pro-jihadist protests”, intended to criminalise Palestine solidarity & anti-imperialist movements. The legal challenge argued that the executive order violated First and Fifth Amendment rights by suppressing political advocacy and allowing government actions, such as visa revocations and deportation threats, without adequate due process. Unfortunately, the legal challenge was unsuccessful. Fearing for his safety and the possibility of being detained by ICE, and with no confidence in the US judicial system, Momodou left the United States, and Amandla soon followed. Both Amandla and Momodou are living in Egypt.

An investigation by The Intercept found that, leading up to Amandla’s departure from the United States, Google secretly gave ICE agents his Gmail account information and a federal subpoena to release banking and credit card information. The purpose was to help ICE track down and detain Amandla, who was hiding in safe houses from ICE before he left the United States.

In January 2026, Momodou, a British citizen, travelled to the UK and was detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 by three officers in civilian clothes and held for six hours, and answered questions about his childhood, friends, mosques, Islamic preachers, and whether he had ever read Karl Marx. As Momodou wrote about the experience of his UK detention for The Nation, “within minutes of landing at Heathrow, I found myself back inside [the US security state].”

Cornell University previously allowed Amandla and Momodou to continue with their PhD research and funding while abroad. However, in August 2026, Cornell University informed both Amandla and Momodou that if they do not return to the United States, their funding will end. Instead of showing support for Amandla and Momodou, Cornell University has consistently sided with the Trump administration in its targeting of pro-Palestine migrant students.

Boycott Cornell University and Show Solidarity with Palestine and Migrant Students

The institutionalised misogyny that is witnessed at Cornell University when it comes to sexual assault is also linked to Palestine, carceral borders and the dispossession of indigenous communities in the United States. Thousands of Palestinians, both men and women, are currently detained in Israeli prisons, sexually assaulted, tortured, and killed. Migrants inside immigration detention, whether in the US, UK, or EU, have been subjected to sexual violence, torture, and physical assault. We cannot forget that as a land-grant institution, Cornell University was established through the genocide of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ (the Cayuga Nation).  Universities like Cornell have long profited from the violence and genocide in Gaza, in addition to indigenous communities, and the ongoing violence unleashed upon migrants. 

As educators, students, activists, and the general public, it is our ethical and moral duty to show solidarity with Amandla and Momodou for bravely continuing to raise their heads above the pulpit as migrants in their refusal to cower before Cornell University’s deliberate harassment campaign against Palestinian liberation. 

Cornell University’s behaviour towards Amandla and Momodou is deeply shameful, particularly given they could have used their due discretion as an elite university to thwart the Trump administration’s criminalisation of migrant students who support Palestine. Instead, Cornell University towed the Trump administration’s pro-Zionist policy on migrant students involved in Palestine solidarity by using administrative violence by way of PhD funding to force Amandla and Momodou out of their studies and ultimately, out of Cornell University. It is especially egregiously bad, given Cornell University’s support of Black Lives Matter, that a university, with a population of 4,000 PhD students, would continue to mistreat two Black, Muslim PhD students, out of the paltry 310 Black PhD students currently enrolled, merely for exercising their solidarity with Palestine.

For these reasons, we call at this critical time for a complete boycott of Cornell University for its decision to rescind funding for Amandla and Momodou. We will maintain the boycott of Cornell University until it reverses its decision and reinstates Amandla’s and Momodou’s PhD funding.

We encourage academics, early career researchers, students (PhD, MA/MSc, and Bachelor’s), activist groups and collectives, and members of the general public to refrain from doing the following:

1. Taking up employment or student places at Cornell University. 

2. Speaking and/or attending conferences, workshops, and talks, whether officially invited by a department, academic association, or student association at Cornell University. We implore student groups to hold their talks and events off Cornell University campus as a form of protest against the institution’s draconian curtailing of student activism for Palestinian liberation in addition to its horrific targeting of migrant students.

3. Collaboration with academic staff at Cornell University.

4. Publishing with Cornell University Press.

Only by isolating Cornell University can we send a robust message that any university that capitulates to Zionism, Trump’s fascism, and carceral violence and oppression of pro-Palestine migrant students is no longer a place of education but a cog in the growing fascism engulfing the United States.

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Ahead of the launch of the Education Without Chains study in Gaza, here is one of the study participants, Heba Shaaban Suaiman Qudaih, a nursing graduate from Al-Aqsa University, discussing how outstanding tuition fees prevent health professionals like her from supporting and rebuilding Gaza, and particularly its healthcare system.

Mohammed Abuiwaili, the co-founder of Education Without Chains and a recent graduate with a Bachelor’s in Medical Laboratory Sciences from Al-Azhar University Gaza, describes in this clip the insurmountable financial barriers caused by ongoing genocide. This financial barrier before October 2023 made it difficult to be able to pay tuition fees and complete university education. Now, as genocide continues, many more Gaza university students are stuck in limbo, having no ability to either pay outstanding tuition fees to be able to graduate or continue and finish their degree courses.


About Education Without Chains

The Education Without Chains survey came about in August 2025. Mohammed Abuiwaili, a recent graduate of Al-Azhar University in Medical Laboratory Sciences, was connected through UK student activists to Sanaz Raji, a migrant campaigner and academic researcher in England. Initially, the student activists led Sanaz to believe that Mohammed was having an immigration problem coming to the UK. However, upon speaking to Mohammed directly, Sanaz realised that the problem was not related to immigration, but rather educational barriers because of scholasticide and ongoing genocide in Gaza, creating insurmountable difficulties in paying tuition fees. Mohammed connected Sanaz with Shaker Albuhaisi, another graduate of Al-Azhar University, who also had outstanding tuition fees that needed to be paid to receive his graduate certificate.

As migrant academic scholars and students, Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) viewed the educational exclusion that both Mohammed and Shaker were experiencing because of genocide as something similar to the exclusion that migrant students also experience because of state violence as a result of the Hostile Environment Policy, draconian border regimes and financial precarity caused by the rapidly more stringent immigration laws. URBC made a collective decision to use some funds intended for legal casework for migrant students in need of urgent support to pay for the outstanding tuition fees owed by both Mohammed (£744.33) and Shaker (£297.73). Clearing these outstanding tuition fees helped Mohammed and Shaker receive their certification of graduation. This, in turn, allowed Shaker to commence a scholarship with Scholarships for Ghazza to study at University College Dublin in Ireland. URBC also supported Shaker with a laptop and some additional funds for living costs for both Mohammed and Shaker.

In semi-regular Zoom meetings with URBC, both Mohammed and Shaker underscored the financial difficulties of university students in Gaza. Through these discussions, Sanaz indicated that establishing a survey to understand the true extent of funding problems caused by scholasticide and the ongoing genocide was vital in helping others outside of Gaza understand the problem and work to support students affected and help rebuild Gaza’s higher education system. Thus, Education Without Chains, a campaign within URBC, was born. Working collaboratively, Mohammed, Sanaz, and Shaker launched the Education Without Chains Survey online to university students in Gaza on 6 October 2025. Mohammed and Shaker helped circulate the study through university contacts via word of mouth and through university Gaza student WhatsApp groups. The survey ran for 2 months and 25 days, concluding on 31 December 2025, and received 627 responses. Later this month, the study’s findings will be published with recommendations.

From October 2025 to December 2025, working with two Al-Azhar University graduates from Gaza, URBC conducted a survey to understand the effects of financial barriers that contribute to educational exclusion on university students in Gaza, before and after 7 October 2023. This exclusion is a symptom of ongoing genocide that is either preventing university students in Gaza from matriculating in their degree programmes or from graduating because of outstanding tuition fees owed.

Gaza’s higher education system relies heavily on students’ tuition fees to pay lecturers and to help rebuild its infrastructure, which has been damaged by scholasticide. Our roundtable will discuss findings from our survey conducted inside Gaza and an urge for academics, students, and activists to redirect their attention to supporting the stabilisation of Gaza’s higher education system and society by ensuring that these outstanding tuition fees are paid. 

As migrant students and academics who face educational barriers and border violence because of the Hostile Environment Policy, we conducted this work with our Gaza colleagues to underscore the importance of connecting shared experiences and working to ensure the liberation of Palestine.

Sanaz Raji from URBC will chair a roundtable talk that will be joined by three students in Gaza: Heba Shaaban Sulaima Qudaih (Nurse Graduate), Mohammed Abuiwaili (Graduate from Al-Azhar University), Shaymaa Abu Azzoum (3rd Year Medical Student, Al-Azhar University ), along with Shaker Albuhaisi (University College Dublin).  

Student and unwaged tickets for day attendance at the BRISMES conference can be found here. If you are having problems with the BRISMES day rate, send URBC an email, and we will help facilitate your attendance at our roundtable.

Addressed to

Professor Karen Bryan, Vice Chancellor, York St John University 
Dr Rob Hickey, Chief Operating Officer, York St John University 
Professor Richard Bourne,  Pro Vice Chancellor Education, York St John University 
Professor Robert Mortimer,  Pro Vice Chancellor: Research and International, York St John University

Background

Dipesh Ramtel is a migrant undergraduate student from Nepal who was studying Business Administration at York St John University. He was detained on an immigration raid in October at the restaurant where he was working part-time. Dipesh had mistakenly worked a little over the 20-hour limit allowed for student visa holders. Since May, Dipesh’s father has not been able to send the monthly £400 intended for his maintenance. With a significant dip in his finances, Dipesh supported himself through part-time restaurant work. Migrant students from low-income countries, like Nepal, with a GDP per capita of $1,447.31 USD, experience the UK’s cost-of-living crisis more violently. Under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, student visa holders like Dipesh are excluded from benefits and housing. This means that migrant students like Dipesh have no safety net should they face financial problems while living in the UK.


After Dipesh was detained, he spent three days in prison before being transferred to Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), the largest immigration detention centre in all of Europe. After informing his family of his detention, Dipesh’s family encouraged him to return home. Dipesh informed the detention personnel and York St John University of his decision to return to Nepal. The head of immigration compliance at York St John University sent Dipesh an email while in detention, indicating that he had been withdrawn from his course following detention. The email also indicated that Dipesh could request a refund of his autumn semester’s tuition fees, stating, 

“I have also attached a refund form for your completion and return, should you wish to request a refund. Your request will be assessed and you will be informed by our Finance Team @student-transactions, if you are due for any refund.”

Dipesh was removed from the UK on 17 November. On 21 November, Dipesh was sent an email by York St John University’s International Development Manager stating that the university would no longer refund his autumn semester tuition fees, totalling £5,750:

“The denial is based on a confirmed breach of your Student Visa conditions. Our records show you worked beyond the permissible 20 hours per week limit, a mandatory and non-negotiable requirement of your visa. Compliance with the working hour restrictions is essential for maintaining enrolment status and eligibility for any institutional refund.”

Dipesh is being double-punished- both by the UK’s carceral immigration policy and by York St John University, who are keeping the tuition fees that could help support him and his family.

Dipesh in his own words

“I was shocked and frustrated when I learn that York St John University is now refusing to refund my tuition fees for the autumn term. I trusted the university when they told me earlier that the fees would be refunded if I couldn’t continue my studies because of the situation. Now it feels that they’ve broken that promise and are avoiding me whenever I try to contact them.

Without that refund, my family and I are facing serious financial problems. We used a huge amount of our savings to pay those fees, and now that I am back in Nepal, I need that money to continue my education in my country. Without it, I may not be able to study at all. The university’s decision is stopping me from moving forward with my life, and it’s putting a lot of pressure on my family, who are already struggling after everything that happened. 

Extractivism by York St John University in Nepal

York St John University, formerly the College of Ripon and York St John, became a university in 2006 and expanded to awarding doctoral degrees in 2015. The creation of York St John University in the 2000s was when Labour under the Blair and later Brown governments saw the establishment of thousands of full-time and part-time university places. With the introduction of tuition fees for Home students, Labour also sought to increase migrant student numbers because they pay higher tuition fees that subsidise Home student tuition fees and help to fund marketised UK higher education. However, the UK university market-driven policy created an extractivist education model that they practice along with the Hostile Environment policy, the Prevent Duty, genocide, war, and ecological violence, which reproduces colonialism, carcerality, and capitalistic violence. The continual mistreatment of migrant students like Dipesh is a canary in a coal mine, warning of the continued violence that market-driven higher education has produced. 

Nepal has figured prominently as part of York St John University’s internationalising agenda in acquiring new markets of migrant students to fill management’s coffers. Lei Wang, International Development Manager for York St John University, wrote on his LinkedIn profile in the aftermath of Nepal’s Gen Z protests in September,

“We recognise the resilience and strength of the Nepalese community, and we stand alongside you. To our current and prospective students: please know that your safety and wellbeing are our highest priority. We also deeply value the trust and commitment of your families and friends who support you on your educational journey.

York St. John University remains committed to nurturing our strong and growing partnership with Nepal, and to ensuring that students have the support they need—whether here in the UK or in their home country.”

The post was endorsed by Sunil Tuladhar, Country Coordinator for Nepal – York St. John University, along with Dibya Maharjan, Manager at Real Dreams Consultancy. Real Dreams Consultancy is an educational agency in Nepal that guides prospective students on their application and visa process for studying in the UK. On their website, Real Dreams Consultancy explains that York St John University is “The cheapest UK university for Nepalese students.” One must ask why York St John University’s recruitment presents intentionally misleading marketing of studying at York St John University that neglects to mention UK’s  cost-of-living crisis, while factoring in the economic violence inside Nepal,  in addition to more stringent UK border controls for Nepalese youth who are dealing with the tremors of political upheaval, coupled with a high unemployment rate.  How does York St John University’s treatment of Dipesh Ramtel support their commitment to “ensuring that [Nepalese] students have the support they need- whether here or in the UK or in their home country?” 

Dipesh’s case underscores the continued colonality of UK universities that treat migrant students as expendable for their tuition fees while subjecting them to border violence. 

Demands

We, the undersigned, demand that York St John University:

1. Immediately refund Dipesh Ramtel his autumn 2025 term tuition fee, totalling £5,750.

2. To make a public apology for contributing to worsening mental and physical health by attempting to steal and financially disadvantage Dipesh and his family in the most vile manner, as they recover from his immigration detention and his family losing their savings that were used to pay tuition fees to York St John University.

3. To stop hoarding the tuition fees of migrant students who find themselves in immigration detention for merely trying to survive economic exploitation at the hands of your university and border violence.

4. Stop misleading and harmful advertisements to migrant students, particularly from low-income countries, that do not reflect the situation on the ground in relation to the UK’s inflation rate, the Hostile Environment policy, and the changing landscape of immigration.

5. To end punitive border controls on campus via the Hostile Environment policy. 

DEADLINE TO SIGN BY: 11PM, FRIDAY 30 JANUARY 2026

List of signatories will be updated every Wednesday.

Click to sign the letter here.