White House says Columbia University activist detained for distributing ‘pro-Hamas propaganda’

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says a Columbia University anti-Israel activist was detained for deportation due to support for the Hamas terrorist group.

Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia and a lead protest organizer on the campus, was detained on Saturday by federal authorities and is being held pending legal proceedings in New York.

“Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities and colleges and he took advantage of that opportunity by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists,” Leavitt says at a press briefing.

“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers,” Leavitt says.

Khalil attended a protest last week at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate, during which activists handed out pamphlets from the “Hamas media office.”

“This administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans,” Leavitt says.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the authority to revoke the green card or visa of an alien whose presence or activity in the US “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” she says.

Leavitt repeats Trump’s stated plan for arresting more foreign protesters but says she does not have an estimate on the number of planned arrests.

The Department of Homeland Security is gathering intelligence on potential targets, she says.

Columbia has been given names of other individuals who have “engaged in pro-Hamas activity” but is refusing to help federal authorities locate the suspects, she adds.