US immigration forces on Saturday arrested an eminent Palestinian activist Mahmoud KhalilA Palestinian refugee of Syrian origin, which played an important role in the orchestration Protests from the campus of the University of Columbia This urged the institution to decide in Israel, causing generalized disturbances to student life.
Khalil, whose family is from the city of northern Tiberiad, obtained their master’s degree at Columbia University last December after having led the accusation to a demonstration of several months, on a campus level (similar to those held in Some Canadian institutions) Characterized by camps, intense negotiations of student teachers and a wave of anti -Semitism, which Khalil condemned.
“There is, of course, no place for anti-Semitism,” he told CNN in April. “What we are witnessing is the anti-Palestinian feeling that takes different forms and anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism (are) some of these forms.”
Khalil was inside his apartment when American immigration and customs application (ice) The police entered and held it on Saturday eveningHis lawyer, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.
File – members of the apartheid disinvestment group of Columbia University, including Sueda Polat, second on the left, and Mahmoud Khalil, center, are surrounded by media members outside the campus of Columbia University, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York. (AP photo / Mary Altaffer, file).
Mary Altaffer / AP
Greer says that she spoke with an ice agent during the arrest who informed her that they had been ordered by the State Department to seize the Khalil student visa. When she told agents that he was a permanent resident, they said they would rather revoke her green card.
Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is Eight pregnant monthswas present during his detention.
On Sunday, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said that Khalil’s arrest had been undertaken “in support of President Trump’s decrees prohibiting anti-Semitism”.
In an article on Truth Social on Monday, Trump called Khalil “a radical foreign pro-Hammas”.
His arrest marks the first of a repression commissioned by Trump against university students who participated in demonstrations against the conflict of Israel-Hamas last year. The president called the people involved as “terrorist sympathizers”, declaring that they were no longer allowed to stay in the United States
“We will find, understand and expel these terrorist sympathizers from our country-to never come back,” he wrote.
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Meanwhile, Khalil has long maintained his position according to which he supports the release of the Palestinians and the Jews, saying to CNN last spring: “I believe that the release of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people is intertwined and goes by hand and that you cannot make one without the other.”
After his detention, demonstrators bordered the streets of New York demanding the release of Khalil.
According to Greer, the authorities said Khalil was detained in a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. However, when his wife tried to visit him on the weekend, he was not there.
The director of the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) Union dispeng, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, said Khalil on Monday on Monday Sunday evening in a detention center in Louisiana Without notice given to his family or his lawyer.
Khalil remains in Louisiana on Wednesday.
“We were unable to get more details about the reasons why he is detained,” said Greer in the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration follows its threats. »»
The demonstrators meet at Foley Square and walk in the streets of Lower Manhattan to protest against the detention of the Palestinian University student, Mahmoud Khalil, by American immigration and the application of customs in New York, March 10, 2025. (Selcuk Acar / Anadolie / Getty Images).
SELCUK ACAR / GETTY Images)
Efforts to expel Khalil blocked by the federal judge Jesse Furman Monday afternoon. Furman ordered an audience on the case of Khalil, to be held Wednesday morning in New York.
What happened last spring?
Khalil started his studies at Columbia’s School of International Affairs in 2023, shortly before Hamas attack Israel on October 7, encouraging a devastating conflict.
The conflict that followed drew media attention to Columbia students, who began to create campus camps and to hold teachings in a rallying cry to end the university’s financial investments in Israel and ask a cease-fire.
Khalil, who did not participate directly in the camps for fear of revoking his student visa, assumed a role of negotiator and spokesperson, representative Columbia University Apartheid DisinvestirA coalition of anti-Israeli conflict organizations managed by students.
Khalil frequently talked to the press and was responsible for maintaining the interests of militant students during discussions with the university concerning the conditions to end the demonstrations.
The demonstrations degenerated in early May after the student body did not comply with its deadline to dismantle the camps. Consequently, students, alongside the public members, occupied Hamilton Hall, a university building, closing inside.
Students demonstrators lock their arms to keep the authorities potential against colleagues demonstrators who barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall at Columbia University on Tuesday April 30, 2024 in New York. (Photo of Alex Kent / Getty Images).
Images Alex Kent / Getty
Columbia used police assistance to withdraw the demonstrators and more than 280 people were arrested, according to the media.
After climbing, Khalil told the BBC that the school had moved to suspend it, but that I chose not to do it.
“After examining the evidence, They have no evidence to suspend … This shows how random the suspension was … They did it at random and without regular procedure, “he told the BBC.
Almost a year later, Khalil – once again, whose current location is unknown – now faced with expulsion, which, according to Wizner, was “unprecedented, illegal and not American”.
“To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the United States, government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and cool the speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately send Mr. Khalil to New York, put him back to his family and reverse the course on this discriminatory policy, “he concluded.
When he was asked to specify what alleged crimes Khalil had committed at a press conference in Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Chamber Mike Johnson said he had known the “angry crowd in Columbia at the height of these things”.
“… If you are on a student visa and you are a young budding terrorist who wants to attack your Jewish classmates, you go home,” he told journalists.
He did not specify the crimes of which Khalil would have been guilty.
–With files from the Associated Press