A second person who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University has been arrested by U.S. immigration agents, after overstaying a student visa, federal officials said Friday, the latest turn in the crisis engulfing the Ivy League institution.

The person, identified by authorities as Leqaa Kordia, is Palestinian and from the West Bank. She was arrested in Newark, N.J., on Thursday, officials said. Her student visa was terminated in January 2022, and she was arrested by the New York City police last April for her role in a campus demonstration, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement.

The agency also released a video Friday that it said showed a Columbia student, identified as Ranjani Srinivasan, preparing to enter Canada after her student visa was revoked.

The announcements, by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reflected an escalation of the Trump administration’s focus on Columbia, where protests over the war in the Gaza Strip last year ignited a national debate over free speech and antisemitism, and prompted similar demonstrations at dozens of other campuses.

The actions came during a tumultuous week at the university, which has experienced a series of escalating controversies since the arrest by federal immigration agents last weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia graduate and prominent figure in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.

On Friday, more than 200 students gathered outside Columbia’s main campus gates to protest the university’s handling of Khalil’s arrest. Demonstrators wore kaffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags and carried banners with slogans like “Free Mahmoud,” “ICE off our campuses” and “Columbia You Can’t Hide.”

The protest unfolded less than 24 hours after homeland security agents entered the campus with federal warrants and searched two dorm rooms. No one was detained and nothing was taken, according to the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong.

White House ultimatum threatens Columbia

The Trump administration has delivered an extraordinary ultimatum to Columbia University, threatening to permanently end federal funding to the Ivy League school unless it cedes control of an international studies department and implements sweeping changes to other campus policies.

In a letter sent Thursday night, federal officials said the university must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.”

It must also ban masks on campus meant to conceal the wearer’s identity “or intimidate others,” adopt a new definition of antisemitism, abolish its current process for disciplining students and deliver a plan to ”reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices.”

The letter described those changes and others as “preconditions” in order to begin “formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”

It did not elaborate on why it was targeting the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department or what the process of “receivership” would entail.

Court lifts block on Trump DEI orders

An appeals court on Friday lifted a block on executive orders seeking to end government support for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, handing the Trump administration a win after a string of setbacks defending President Donald Trump’s agenda from dozens of lawsuits.

The decision from a three-judge panel allows the orders to be enforced as a lawsuit challenging them plays out. The appeals court judges halted a nationwide injunction from U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson in Baltimore.

Two of the judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that Trump’s anti-DEI push could eventually raise concerns about First Amendment rights but said the judge’s sweeping block went too far.

The city of Baltimore and other groups sued the Trump administration, arguing the executive orders are an unconstitutional overreach of presidential authority.

Hamas says it will release American

Hamas said Friday that it had agreed to free Edan Alexander, an American Israeli soldier who has been held in the Gaza Strip for 17 months, along with the remains of four other hostages with dual citizenship. Israel immediately cast doubt on the proposal’s viability, suggesting a deal was unlikely to be imminent.

In a statement, Hamas said it had formally declared its willingness to free Alexander and the others in a response to the latest ceasefire proposal offered by mediators, without specifying which ones. But the Palestinian armed group did not say what it was demanding in exchange for the captives or when it would turn the five over to Israel.

A senior Hamas official said the group’s offer stipulated that Israel release some Palestinian prisoners, restore aid to Gaza and enter talks on the ceasefire’s next phase in exchange for Alexander — believed to be the last surviving captive with U.S. citizenship — and the remains of four other American Israelis.

SpaceX launch will retrieve 2 astronauts

The replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts launched to the International Space Station on Friday night, paving the way for the pair’s return after nine long months.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams need SpaceX to get this relief team to the space station before they can check out. Arrival is set for late Saturday night.

NASA wants overlap between the two crews so Wilmore and Williams can fill in the newcomers on happenings aboard the orbiting lab. That would put them on course for an undocking next week and a splashdown off the Florida coast, weather permitting.

The duo will be escorted back by astronauts who flew up on a rescue mission on SpaceX last September alongside two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams on the return leg.

Carney sworn in as new Canadian P.M.

Former central banker Mark Carney was sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister on Friday, and will now try to steer his country through a trade war brought by U.S. President Donald Trump, annexation threats and an expected federal election.

Carney, 59, replaces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation in January but remained in power until the Liberal Party elected a new leader. Carney is widely expected to trigger a general election in the coming days or weeks.

“We will never, ever, in any way shape or form, be part of the United States. America is not Canada,” Carney said. “We are very fundamentally a different country.”

The governing Liberal Party had appeared poised for a historic election defeat this year until Trump declared economic war and repeatedly has said Canada should become the 51st state. Now the party and its new leader could come out on top.

Rubio: South African envoy not welcome

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country, in the latest Trump administration move targeting the African nation.

Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump. Rubio declared the South African diplomat “persona non grata.”

Neither Rubio, who posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada, nor the State Department gave any immediate explanation for the decision. But Rubio linked to a Breitbart story about a talk Rasool gave earlier Friday as part of a South African think tank’s webinar in which he spoke about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

White House opens first leaks investigation

The Trump administration has opened its first known investigations into what it called “politically motivated leaks,” fulfilling promises to pursue the sources of stories involving national security revelations.

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced the investigations in a statement Friday. Among the accusations, she said The Washington Post had published leaked information on Iran and Israel, and NBC had published leaked information on the state of U.S.-Russia relations.

It was not clear that any published information was classified, or that the news organizations had received classified materials. There are tight restrictions on the circumstances under which intelligence officials can provide information to the news media.

Mace faces lawsuit over House comments

A South Carolina man who contends Rep. Nancy Mace lied about him when she accused him of sex crimes filed a libel and defamation lawsuit against Mace in federal court Friday.

The 37-page lawsuit, filed by Brian Musgrave, of Fort Mill, S.C., contends that Mace falsely accused him being a rapist, sex trafficker and predator when she made a speech about Musgrave and three other men on the floor of the U.S. House on Feb. 10.

The lawsuit raises a major Constitutional question. Under what is called the “Speech and Debate” clause of the U.S. Constitution, members of Congress are allowed great latitude in anything they say on the House or Senate floor.

Alan Simpson, Wyo. senator, dies at 93

Alan K. Simpson, a plainspoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.

He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.

Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom schoolchildren and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmentalists.

— News service reports