President Donald Trump confirmed Monday that federal immigration agents arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate who was taken this weekend — despite being a permanent legal resident of the United States — for helping peacefully lead antiwar protests on campus last year.
Despite not having a warrant, plainclothes agents abducted Khalil Saturday night as he returned to his university-owned apartment with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. Agents claimed they were revoking Syrian-born Khalil’s green card and also threatened to detain his wife, according to his attorney.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Khalil’s arrest before Trump announced it himself Monday afternoon, with the president labeling the Palestinian man a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” without providing any evidence to support that claim. The arrest was first reported by Zeteo.
“This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump posted on Truth Social, again claiming without evidence that antiwar activists on college campuses are “paid agitators” and not students.
Khalil, who received his master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, was a prominent figure in last spring’s protests on college campuses nationwide. Students and faculty of all faiths nonviolently called on the U.S. to stop supporting Israel’s deadly military offensive in Gaza and for their universities to divest from companies that work with the Israeli military and government.
Columbia University, in particular, came under scrutiny for its aggressive response that included allowing New York police to destroy solidarity encampments and arrest protesters. Khalil was a lead negotiator in the university’s encampment and just last week told The Associated Press that he was among those under investigation by a new Columbia office that has disciplined dozens of pro-Palestinian student activists.
“There have been reports of ICE around campus. Columbia has and will continue to follow the law,” the university said in a Sunday statement. “Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings.”
Three ICE agents also visited a second foreign student at Columbia over the weekend and attempted to enter her university-owned apartment without a warrant, according to a graduate student union representing the unidentified woman. The Student Workers of Columbia said the agents were “rightfully turned away at the door,” according to the AP.
Columbia University did not say whether it had prior knowledge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting Khalil without a warrant. But the school announced its Morningside campus is essentially locking down beginning Monday and will have additional public safety guards at the gates and around the perimeter, according to an email obtained by Zeteo.
In a statement to media outlets, Khalil’s attorney, Amy Greer, said she had filed a habeas corpus petition on the activist’s behalf challenging the arrest’s validity. Immigration experts say DHS can start deportation proceedings against green card holders for alleged criminal activity, but the legal basis for detaining a legal permanent resident without criminal charges is shaky.
While DHS accused Khalil of engaging in “activities aligned to Hamas,” the agency gave no evidence of him providing material support to the militant group.
Greer said she was initially told that Khalil was transferred to an ICE detention center in New Jersey. Upon visiting the facility, his wife was told he was not there. According to the ICE detainee tracker, Khalil has been transferred to the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin did not respond to HuffPost to say why agents did not inform Khalil’s wife of his location, nor why agents ignored Khalil’s constitutional rights by taking him, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., without a warrant.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim American advocacy group, said it will join other civil rights organizations in helping fight Khalil’s detention, which is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s ongoing crackdown on free speech that he’s portrayed as fighting antisemitism.
“It is utterly despicable that they are carrying out this authoritarian lurch under the guise of fighting for Jewish safety. Let’s be perfectly clear: not only does destroying higher education and abducting students for political speech not keep Jews safe, it actively endangers us,” said Eva Borgwardt, spokesperson for progressive Jewish American group IfNotNow, on Monday.
“If we do not all strongly oppose this dystopian crackdown on freedom of expression, directed by a government with many neo-Nazi ties and members, any of Trump’s political opponents could be its next victims,” she continued. “Advocates for reproductive justice, climate action, trans rights, immigrant rights and other progressive causes.”