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On the evening of March 8, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) arrested<\/a> and detained a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University over his pro-Palestinian activism on Columbia\u2019s campus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Mahmoud Khalil, who received<\/a> a master\u2019s degree from Columbia\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs in December, was returning to his university-owned apartment with his wife, Noor Abdalla\u2014who is eight months pregnant\u2014when he was grabbed by plainclothes ICE agents, video released<\/a> by the ACLU shows.<\/p>\n While Abdalla called their lawyer, the agents told them that the State Department had revoked his student visa. Khalil was reportedly<\/a> in the United States on a student visa as recently as 2024, but has since obtained a green card, granting him legal permanent residency.<\/p>\n When Khalil informed the agents of this, however, they allegedly told him<\/a> they would revoke his green card as well. Evidently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had personally targeted Khalil<\/a> under the Cold War-era Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, which allows him to declare someone \u201cdeportable\u201d if they have \u201creasonable ground to believe\u201d that the immigrant\u2019s \u201cpresence or activities in the U.S. . . . . would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.\u201dAccording to Abdalla, who is a U.S. citizen, the agents then threatened<\/a> to arrest her as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just one day prior to the arrest, Khalil told university officials that he feared for his life. \u201cSince yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai [an assistant professor<\/a>] and David Lederer [an undergraduate student<\/a>] who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation,\u201d he wrote<\/a> in an email to interim Columbia President Katrina Armstrong. \u201cTheir attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the most dire threats, he said, was a post<\/a> from Betar<\/a>, a rightwing Zionist group so reactionary and combative that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)\u2014which has recently come under fire<\/a> for condoning anti-Palestinian violence, appearing to defend Elon Musk after he performed a sieg heil<\/em> during President Donald Trump\u2019s Inauguration weekend, and even praising Khalil\u2019s arrest<\/a>\u2014has dubbed it an \u201cextremist<\/a>\u201d group.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home,\u201d Khalil wrote in the email to Armstrong dated March 7. \u201cI urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.\u201d<\/p>\n Abdalla says<\/a> the university never responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe officers later barricaded Mahmoud from me,\u201d she said<\/a> in a statement. \u201cWe were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n Typically, a green card holder can only be deported if they are convicted of a crime. Khalil has not been charged with one, according to court records<\/a>. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told The Verge<\/em><\/a> on Monday that Khalil had been arrested \u201cin support of President Trump\u2019s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n In spring of 2024, Khalil was one of the primary facilitators of attempted negotiations between student protesters organized under a coalition<\/a> called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia administrators. In April, he told reporters<\/a> that he did not directly participate in the encampment on the college lawn due to concerns that he might be targeted by law enforcement. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m not suspended,\u201d he said during a press conference at the time. \u201cI did not participate, fearing that I will be arrested and ultimately deported from this country.\u201d A month later, he told reporters<\/a> that he was briefly suspended by Columbia, and that the school had promptly reinstated him after reviewing the decision.<\/p>\n After being forcibly detained, Khalil seemingly disappeared. He was initially taken<\/a> downtown, then to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but when Abdalla tried to find him there, officials told her he was no longer at the facility. His location was unknown to his family and lawyer until March 10, when his name finally appeared on the federal database<\/a> of ICE detainees at a privately-owned detention facility in Jena, Louisiana.\u00a0<\/p>\n An attorney representing the Department of Justice said in court<\/a> that Khalil is not in immediate danger of deportation while immigration proceedings are ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under pressure from the Trump Administration, Columbia has cracked down on students known to have been involved in last year\u2019s encampment protest and in ongoing Palestinian solidarity activism on campus. Since last April, both Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, have aggressively targeted<\/a> pro-Palestinian activists for suspension, expulsion, and even post-graduate withdrawl of degrees.This prompted outrage from pro-Palestinian student groups, who staged sit-ins calling on the school to grant amnesty to student activists.\u00a0<\/p>\n During one sit-in on March 5, administrators implored activists to vacate the Milstein Library<\/a> building on account of a \u201cbomb threat<\/a>.\u201d After the protesters refused to leave, New York Police Department officers entered campus to arrest students. The alleged bomb threat raised suspicions among many students, including those in the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of evacuating campus @BarnardCollege sent a PRIVATE EMAIL to CUAD (@ColumbiaBDS) claiming there was \u2018threat of a pipe bomb,\u2019 \u201d Columbia SJP wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cNYPD ordered protestors move back 1,000 feet from the library, yet on-campus freshman dorms received no notice to evacuate and multiple staff, students, and workers were left on the second floor of the library. If the bomb threat wasn\u2019t manufactured by Barnard administrators, they put thousands of people on campus at extreme risk in order to arrest and brutalize protestors gathered at the lawn.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Khalil\u2019s detainment, other reports of violence against student immigrant activists have poured in. In the past week, the Department of Justice has raided Columbia student dorms for supposedly harboring \u201cillegal aliens<\/a>\u201d and detained at least one other Palestinian student activist, Leqaa Kordia<\/a>, for potential deportation. Trump has said that Khalil\u2019s detainment is \u201cthe first of many to come<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n At a press conference hosted by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice near Columbia\u2019s campus on March 10, community leaders spoke out<\/a> in defense of Khalil. \u201cMy committed Jewish faculty colleagues and I have warned that the false characterization of [Columbia] as a hotbed of antisemitism would be used as an alibi for what\u2019s actually at stake for the Republican establishment and now the Trump Administration\u2014strict control of speech, of protest, and of higher education at large,\u201d said Professor Marianne Hirsch, a member of the Columbia Jewish Faculty Group.<\/p>\n Sonya Posmentier, an associate professor at nearby New York University and a member of the Sanctuary Campus Network, which organizes to protect college students from deportation, also spoke at the press conference, calling on faculty across the country to stand with at-risk students who are protesting the genocide in Gaza, and to \u201ctake on some of that risk\u201d themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing willing to show up with our bodies is something that I hear our students asking for,\u201d she told The Progressive<\/em>. \u201cTo be in spaces of protest with them; to speak out with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n