YUNSEO CHUNG

They told her to assimilate. Then punished her for believing them.

Yunseo Chung was seven when she came to America. By twenty, she had a Columbia University ID, a green card, and a head full of ideas about democracy, civil rights, and peaceful protest.

Big mistake.

In March 2025, Yunseo joined a sit-in at Barnard College. No broken windows. No masks. No Molotovs. Just students in chairs, arms linked, holding signs about Palestine and Columbia’s complicity.

Four days later, ICE showed up.

They knocked on her parents’ door first. Then her dorm. They carried a “harboring” warrant — a flimsy legal fig leaf once used for smugglers, now rebranded for students who sit too still and speak too clearly. DHS called her a “foreign policy threat.”

Translation: she embarrassed them.

No hearing. No charges. Just a green card marked for deletion. She went underground. Lawyers stepped in. A federal judge issued a restraining order, temporarily blocking her arrest and demanding answers.

The government offered none. Just silence and red tape.

Yunseo wasn’t undocumented. She wasn’t violent. She was a straight-A student who took the First Amendment seriously — until it kicked her in the teeth.

She’s still in hiding. Still waiting.

Because when you protest injustice in Trump’s America, they don’t just ignore you.

They hunt you.

---

If this story matters to you, support the work that tells it.

At Closer to the Edge, we don’t just report the headlines — we follow the knock on the door. We track the raids, the redactions, and the kids who go underground for believing in democracy.

This platform runs on truth, caffeine, and readers like you.

Subscribe to keep us loud, unbought, and unafraid.