The student workers’ union said on Sunday that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) arrested a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in last year’s pro-Palestinian protests at New York’s Columbia University.
The student, Mahmoud Khalil at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, was arrested at his university residence on Saturday, the Student Workers of Columbia union said in a statement.
Who is Mahmoud Khalil?
Born in a Syrian refugee camp, Mahmoud Khalil has talked about his Palestinian heritage and was a major figure during last spring and summer’s protests on the Columbia University campus in New York City. According to his online biography, Khalil was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and has worked for the British embassy in Beirut.
A spokesperson for Columbia said the school was barred by law from sharing information about individual students, but said in a statement the school was “committed to the legal rights of our students.”
The protests included occupation of classrooms and a large tent encampment and criticized Israel for attacking Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Khalil became one of the most prominent faces of protest in the university when hundreds of students erected tents on campus and conducted an encampment movement in the famous Hamilton Hall. Khalil was eventually picked to serve as a negotiator on behalf of students and met frequently with university administrators.
Many university campuses also saw similar protests, which also criticized the Biden administration for not doing more to stop Israel’s attacks on Gaza, with some participants calling it a genocide.
When the classes resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the pro-Palestinian protests would continue on the university premises. He said at that time, “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist.”
Because he was the visible face of the protest, Khalil said he has been “doxed” by right-wing figures aligned with Trump. According to his attorney, he repeatedly asked Columbia for protection after being subject to a “vicious and dehumanizing” campaign by those figures, who called him a terrorist and demanded his deportation.
Why was Khalil arrested?
Khalil’s detention seems to be one of the first actions by US President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in January, to make good on his promise to target “foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests”, which he has labelled “antisemitic”. The Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the subsequent US-supported Israeli assault on Gaza have sparked months of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests across US college campuses.
The arrest came days after Trump vowed to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” who took part in what he described as “pro-Hamas” protests across several US campuses.
The administration scrutinised Columbia and its students’ role in the whole saga. As a result, on Friday, the Trump administration announced that they would be cutting $400m in grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the elite school’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus.
Khalil described the movement as an anti-war initiative that includes Jewish students and groups. According to the report, he was also one of the lead negotiators with school administrators on behalf of pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom set up tent encampments on Columbia’s lawns and took over an academic building for several hours before police were called to arrest them. As per Reuters’ report, Khalil was not in the group that occupied the building but was a mediator between Columbia vice provosts and the protesters. In an interview with Reuters a few hours before his arrest on Saturday about Trump’s criticism of student protesters, Khalil said he was concerned that the government was targeting him for speaking to the media.
Life beyond activism:
Khalil is married to an American citizen and holds a green card granting him permanent U.S. residency, his attorney said.
Last April, Khalil, then a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs, said he had initially been reluctant to speak out on behalf of Palestinian students over fears he could be deported. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was scheduled to have graduated in December with a Master’s degree in Public Administration.
The lawyer of activist Mahmoud Khalil said that during the arrest, ICE officials claimed they were acting on a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s green card. Khalil was at his university-owned apartment when ICE agents entered the building and took him into custody.
His lawyer, Amy Geer, told the Associated Press that one of the agents called her and conveyed that they were executing a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. The pro-Palestinian activist graduated from an Ivy League college in December last year and was a green card holder.
Geer told the Associated Press that the ICE agents declined to tell Khalil’s wife why he was being detained. The activist’s wife is eight months pregnant. The lawyer 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 Associated Press.
She added, “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Columbia University made it clear that law enforcement officials must produce a warrant before entering the university premises. However, he declined to comment on whether such a warrant was received by the university for Khalil’s arrest.
Where is he now?
Although the pro-Palestinian activist graduated from an Ivy League college in December last year and was a green card holder, as of Sunday, he was being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as confirmed by the ICE online detainee locator.