US authorities arrest Palestinian Columbia student who led anti-Israel protests
Immigration agents haul in Mahmoud Khalil, who has an American wife, tell his attorney they are revoking his green card; last year he was among leaders of campus demonstrations
A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested Saturday night by federal immigration authorities, who claimed they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.
Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment blocks from Columbia’s Manhattan campus when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told The Associated Press.
Khalil has been one of the negotiators with school administrators on behalf of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian student protesters, who set up a tent encampment on a Columbia lawn last year. He became one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia.
One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated in December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.
Khalil’s detention appears to be one of the first efforts by US President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in January, to fulfill his promise to seek the deportation of some foreign students involved in the anti-Israel protest movement amid a drive to combat antisemitism.
The October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and ensuing Israeli war with the Palestinian terror group in the Gaza Strip led to months of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests that roiled US college campuses.
Those protests have continued at Columbia, and in the past two weeks, at the university and its affiliate Barnard College, student protesters invaded campus buildings and distributed Hamas propaganda material on multiple occasions.
The authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is American and eight months pregnant, why he was being detained, Greer said. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”
A spokesperson for Columbia said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson declined to say if the school had received a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State, which oversees the country’s visa system, did not respond to questions.
In an interview with Reuters a few hours before his arrest on Saturday, Khalil, at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, said he was concerned that he was being targeted by the government and some conservative pro-Israel groups for speaking to the media.
The Trump administration on Friday said it had canceled government contracts and grants awarded to Columbia University worth about $400 million. The government said the cuts and the student deportation efforts are due to antisemitic harassment at and near Columbia’s Manhattan campus.
“What more can Columbia do to appease Congress or the government now?” Khalil said before his arrest, noting that Columbia had twice called in police to arrest protesters and had disciplined many pro-Palestinian students and staff, suspending some. “They basically silenced anyone supporting Palestine on campus and this was not enough. Clearly Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system.”
Maryam Alwan, a Columbia senior who has protested alongside Khalil, said the Trump administration was dehumanizing Palestinians.
“I am horrified for my dear friend Mahmoud, who is a legal resident, and I am horrified that this is only the beginning,” she said.
When classes resumed in September, Khalil told The Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”
The State Department on Friday reportedly revoked the visa of a foreign student who participated in pro-Hamas demonstrations.
Columbia was racked by raucous anti-Israel protests last year, culminating in a protest encampment at the center of campus that inspired similar demonstrations nationwide and the student takeover of a campus library. The university administration called police in to forcibly clear the library, resulting in dozens of arrests.
Protests at Columbia have reignited following the expulsion of two students who disrupted an Israeli professor’s class at the start of the spring semester. In response, anti-Israel protesters last week invaded a campus building at Barnard injuring a university employee and causing $30,000 in damage.
An Anti-Defamation League survey published last month found that 83 percent of Jewish college students experienced or witnessed antisemitism since the beginning of the Gaza war, and 66% said they were not confident in their school’s ability to prevent antisemitic incidents.
