ICE releases influencer, but tens of thousands detained have different fate

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani apparently helped to encourage US president Donald Trump and his paramilitary militia, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit, to release a Columbia student with over 100,000 Instagram followers. Tens of thousands more people whom immigration authorities have unfairly mistreated, however, haven’t had such luck.

Just got off the phone with President Trump.

In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning.

He has just informed me that she will be released imminently. https://t.co/rvmTWpq83r

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 26, 2026

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had accused Elmina Aghayeva of having a student visa termination due to a ‘failure to attend class’ back in 2016. ICE agents reportedly impersonated police officers to gain access to the Columbia University dorm where they detained Aghayeva.

Many politicians chimed in to criticise her dodgy detention. And it seems Mamdani’s plea to Trump may have made an impact.

However, few of the people ICE has detained during Trump’s second term in office have the same kind of profile Aghayeva does.

What about justice for everyone else?

The Trump regime regularly refers to the people ICE detains as dangerous or violent criminals – supposedly the “worst of the worst“. But as CBS News has reported, a DHS document shows less than 14% of around 400,000 people whom ICE arrested in the last year actually had “charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses”.

ICE’s unaccountable, aggressive behaviour has resulted in numerous deaths. And about 40% of all the people it has arrested “did not have any criminal record at all“, apart from questions relating to their permission to stay in the US. Civil proceedings have usually addressed such violations historically.

This means that ICE is mistreating tens of thousands of people who are definitely not ‘the worst of the worst’, and getting away with it.

Everyone deserves fair treatment from authorities – whether they’re influencers or not. But that doesn’t seem to be the system that currently reigns in the US under Donald Trump. And even politicians don’t seem to make as much noise when ICE detains people who don’t have such a prominent profile.

Featured image via the Canary