The detention is the first publicly known deportation effort related to pro-Palestine activism under President Donald Trump, who has threatened to punish students and others he says support Hamas or promote antisemitism.[5][8] These characterizations have been criticized and described as co-opting antisemitism.[9] Khalil's detention has received widespread backlash from lawyers,[10] members of the Democratic Party, and civil rights organizations, who say it is an attack on freedom of speech and the First Amendment.
Khalil was not charged with a crime upon detention and there is no criminal charge against him.[11][12] Instead, the federal government's argument depends on Section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Cold War era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which provides that migrants in the U.S. may be removed if the U.S. Secretary of State deems that their presence is incompatible with U.S. foreign policy.[13][14] Several journalists have noted the connection of this legislation to Cold War-era McCarthyism.[15][16]
Khalil was born in a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria in 1995[19][20] to Palestinian refugees from Tiberias.[21] He and his family fled to Lebanon in 2012 after the onset of the Syrian civil war.[19][22] Journalist Lauren Bohn, who met Khalil in Beirut while reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis, said Khalil "often referred to himself as a 'double refugee' as a Palestinian in Syria and a Syrian refugee in Lebanon".[19] Bohn reported that Khalil taught himself English while working with Syrian refugees through the Syrian-American education nonprofit Junsoor.[19] Simultaneously, he earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Lebanese American University in Beirut.[19][21]
Khalil then spent years working for the British government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, managing the Chevening Scholarship from the British embassy in Beirut and supporting diplomats with his language skills and local knowledge.[22] In 2022, he immigrated to the U.S. on a student visa to attend SIPA.[23] He completed work on his master's degree in December 2024 and was due to graduate in May 2025.[23][24] As a student, he interned for a United Nations relief agency that supports Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.[19] Khalil received his green card in 2024.[23]
Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, is a dentist and U.S. citizen.[23] The couple married in New York in 2023 after a seven-year long-distance relationship.[23] They met in 2016 when Abdalla joined a volunteer program that Khalil was overseeing in Lebanon. They are expecting their first child in late April 2025.[23]
Khalil's participation in Columbia University protests
Following the start of the Gaza war in 2023, Khalil became involved in pro-Palestinian activism. He served as a negotiator for students associated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) when they were bargaining with Columbia University officials.[5][25] CUAD demanded that Columbia stop investing its $14.8 billion endowment in weapons manufacturers or other companies supporting Israel's government.[23] In a 2024 interview, Khalil said, "As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other." He characterized the movement as one "for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone".[21] Of concerns about antisemitism, Khalil said, "There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that's taking different forms, and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms."[21]
At the time, Khalil was on a student visa that required full time enrollment and could not risk suspension. He has said he avoided activities he believed were "high risk" and communicated with the university to ensure he would not be punished. On April 30, 2024, he received an email from Columbia suspending him for alleged participation in the Columbia tent encampments, but the university retracted the suspension within a day after reviewing their evidence. Columbia University's president’s office called him to apologize for the mistake.[26]
In the summer of 2024, Columbia created an Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) to investigate reports of discrimination on campus. The office opened disciplinary investigations involving a number of students, some of which were based on allegations that they had engaged in anti-Israeli or antisemitic discrimination. Amy Greer, a lawyer advising several students, said that Columbia was bowing "to governmental pressure to suppress and chill protected speech". Khalil was one of the students whose actions the OIE investigated.[27] That investigation involved a number of accusations related to his involvement in CUAD, his alleged help in organizing a march that included participants who purportedly glorified the attacks on October 7, and acts of alleged discrimination, including some criticism of Zionism and harassment and threats toward Jewish and Israeli students.[28][29][5]
Khalil told the Associated Press: "I have around 13 allegations against me. Most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with."[27] The university threatened to block Khalil from graduating for refusing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, but withdrew the threat after Khalil appealed through a lawyer.[27]
Online campaign against Khalil
Khalil was targeted by an online campaign to have him deported.[30]Betar US posted on Twitter in January 2025 that it had given his information to "multiple contacts" and that ICE was "aware of his home address and whereabouts".[31] According to an email Khalil sent Columbia president Katrina Armstrong on March 7, the campaign was being led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer, who had labeled him a "security threat" and called for his deportation.[31]The New York Times said that Davidai "called on Marco Rubio to deport Mr. Khalil."[30] Khalil urged Armstrong and Columbia to "intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm" and asked for legal support for himself and other international students threatened with deportation.[31] After Khalil attended a protest at Barnard College in early March 2025, Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist, met with aides to United States SenatorJohn Fetterman and Ted Cruz to discuss Khalil.[32] According to Glick, the aides promised that their respective senators would "escalate" attention to Khalil.[32]
According to Khalil's wife, he was subject to an "intense" campaign in the week before his arrest, when false claims were spread about him.[33] The day before his detention, Khalil privately reported to Columbia officials incendiary statements that had inspired hateful responses and calls for his deportation, saying, "I haven't been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home."[31]Zeteo reported that those included a "threatening post by the pro-Israel organization Betar in January", in which the group claimed "that he said 'Zionists don’t deserve to live'—a statement Khalil 'unequivocally' denied making".[31]
CUAD demanded that Columbia stop investing its $14.8 billion endowment in companies supporting Israel's government,[35] dismantle a university outpost in Tel Aviv, and end collaboration with Israeli universities.[36] Journalists reported that CUAD became more "hard-line in its rhetoric" over time,[37] praising Hamas and Hezbollah leadership on its Substack[38] and saying on October 8, 2024, that it supported "liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance" and would no longer "pander to liberal media to make the movement for liberation palatable". It also withdrew an apology it had made for a member who said "Zionists don't deserve to live."[37][38]
Trump administration actions
While campaigning for a second term as U.S. president, Trump consistently vowed to cancel the visas of international students who take part in pro-Palestinian protests. At a rally on October 16, 2023, he said, "Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home."[39] After taking office, Trump signed executive order14188 on January 29, 2025.[40] Among other things, this executive order singles out institutions of higher education and calls for the deportation of students with visas who have broken laws during any anti-Israeli protest since the October 7 attacks.[41][42]
Khalil's arrest occurred during a period of heightened federal scrutiny of Columbia University. The day before the arrest, the Trump administration canceled approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, citing an alleged failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus.[25] Columbia said it was reviewing the government's actions and remained committed to combating antisemitism while ensuring its community's safety and well-being.[43][44] The administration subsequently wrote to 60 other universities "under investigation for Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination" to warn them of potential penalties.[45][46] In a social media post on March 4, 2025, Trump said federal funding would stop for any school "that allows illegal protests", that "agitators" would be imprisoned or deported, and that American students would be expelled or arrested.[47] The U.S. State Department said it would use AI to review thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts as well as news reports of demonstrations to identify foreign nationals allegedly engaging in antisemitism as part of new "catch and revoke" policy.[48]
Arrest and detention
At around 8:30 pm on March 8, multiple[3] ICE officers took Khalil from the lobby of his apartment building in Columbia University housing.[49] Khalil's wife, Noor Abdalla, said that when as she and Khalil were returning home from an Iftar dinner, an ICE officer followed them into their building and asked Khalil to confirm his identity, which he did. The officer told Khalil to give his wife the keys to their apartment so that she could go upstairs. When she refused to leave, the officer said, "I will arrest you, too."[50]
Khalil called his lawyer, Amy Greer, from the building's lobby.[3] She spoke over the phone with one of the agents, who told her they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa.[5] Greer said when she informed the agent that Khalil was a permanent resident of the U.S. in possession of a green card, the agent responded they would revoke the green card instead.[5] When Greer said she needed to see a warrant before Khalil could be detained, the agent hung up.[3] Abdalla said they were not shown a warrant and that "within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car".[50] In a video of the arrest, the agents can be heard refusing to give their names and ignoring Abdallah's requests that they identify the agency they represented and that they speak with Greer, who was on the phone with Abdallah.[51] A Columbia spokesperson said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property, but declined to say whether the university had received a warrant for the ICE agents to access Khalil's building. The spokesperson also declined to comment on the arrest.[5] On March 9, Greer said she was uncertain of Khalil's whereabouts, noting the possibility that he could be as far away as Louisiana.[30] Abdalla, who sought to visit him at a detention center in New Jersey, was informed that he was not there.[30]
United States district judge Jesse Furman (pictured) granted a writ of habeas corpus on March 10.
Khalil has not been charged with a crime[54] and is not alleged to have engaged in any activity legally prohibited to U.S. residents.[55] Authorities have not alleged he provided material support to a proscribed organization.[33] Removal procedures were initiated under section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits deportation of lawful residents if the Secretary of State believes that their presence presents a risk of "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences".[56] Khalil's attorneys have called this an "obscure" and "rarely used" section of the act.[55] Judge Maryann Trump Barry found this section unconstitutional in Massieu v. Reno, though that ruling was reversed by a court of appeals for reasons unrelated to the constitutional issues, which the court of appeals did not address.[57][58][a]
Greer filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of New York on March 9, and the next day Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Khalil could not be removed from the U.S. while the court assessed the case.[60] At a March 12 hearing, the government argued for a change of venue to either New Jersey or Louisiana, where Khalil had been held in detention.[61] His lawyers asked that he be returned to New York. Furman ordered that Khalil be allowed two attorney-client-privileged phone calls, and that both the government and Khalil's lawyers submit plans on March 14 for further arguments.[62] Khalil has separately been scheduled for a hearing before a Louisiana immigration judge on March 27.[56]
Government officials have informally accused Khalil of leading "activities aligned with Hamas"; the government has not publicly provided any evidence of this claim.[67][68] Khalil denies the accusation and his attorneys called it "false and preposterous".[33][69] White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also alleged Khalil distributed flyers with a Hamas logo;[70] as of mid-March, neither Leavitt nor ICE publicly provided proof of the existence of such flyers, though Leavitt claimed the flyers were being stored on or inside her desk.[70][71] The Trump administration defended its action, with Secretary of StateMarco Rubio announcing plans to revoke more people's visas or green cards.[72]
Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary Troy Edgar defended the detention. When asked to explain what conduct merited Khalil's removal from the U.S., and specifically how Khalil had supported Hamas, Edgar said, "I think if he would have declared he's a terrorist, we would have never let him in." Throughout the interview, Edgar incorrectly called Khalil a visa holder, despite being corrected that Khalil is a legal permanent resident.[73][74]
Legal analysis
According to Adam Cox, a professor and immigration expert at New York University, a legal permanent U.S. resident can be deported for having been convicted of certain criminal offenses, and some immigration laws make a person deportable for conduct that is not criminal. A non-citizen can also be deported if the State Department has reasonable grounds to believe that their presence or activities in the country would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences.[75]
Just Security wrote that in Bridges v. Wixon (1945), the Supreme Court protected an Australian union organizer from being deported for his pro-labor speech, holding that the First Amendment was applicable to non-citizens. In the decades since, the Supreme Court allowed deportations of non-citizens involved in communist groups in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, though it read First Amendment protections narrowly instead of rejecting their applicability.[76] Citing the same cases, Nadine Strossen said that the constitutional issues are complex and not easily resolvable in cases like Khalil's.[77]
Related lawsuit
On March 13, the New York chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations said it had sued Columbia on behalf of Khalil and several other students and also sued the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Workforce on grounds related to Columbia's compliance with the committee's demand that it give the committee student records.[78][79][80]
Some Republicans who support the Trump administration's broader deportation plans expressed unease at Khalil's arrest.[91]Ann Coulter expressed concern about the arrest's constitutionality,[82] and Matthew Bartlett—a Republican strategist and State Department advisor during the first presidency of Donald Trump—expressed apprehension at the apparent contradiction with JD Vance's advocacy for freedom of speech.[91]Mercedes Schlapp expressed support for Khalil's arrest and also said Rashida Talib should be deported, though Talib is a natural-born U.S. citizen from Detroit.[92]
After Khalil's arrest, demonstrations protesting his detention were held in New York City[93] and an online petition calling for his release received nearly two million signatures.[81][94][95] Other rallies were held at Federal Plaza in Chicago and at Stanford University.[96]
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression legal director Will Creeley called Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary Troy Edgar's NPR interview defending Khalil's detention "stunning" and said his "conflation of protest and terrorism stopped me cold".[74]Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid wrote that the interview was the latest confirmation from the Trump administration that "Khalil's arrest has no basis".[74] Dima Khalidi in The Nation described the administration's actions as McCarthyistred-baiting that weaponize antisemitism.[97]
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL),[81] the Orthodox Union,[103] and Betar US[104] praised the arrest as an effort to stop antisemitism on college campuses. The ADL said the detention "illustrates [the Trump administration's] resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions", but that any immigration status actions must follow due process.[81]
Attorney General of New YorkLetitia James said she was "extremely concerned about the arrest" and her office was "monitoring the situation".[113] New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams declined to opine on the arrests. Adams complained that the level of public support expressed for Khalil eclipsed the level of support he (Adams) received after his own arrest on bribery and wire fraud charges.[114][115]
1 2 El-Bawab, Nadine (March 15, 2025). "White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says". ABC News. Retrieved March 14, 2025. The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed "pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas," without providing evidence. "I have those fliers on my desk, they were provided to me by the Department of Homeland Security," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
↑ Nicastro, Jack (March 10, 2025). "Is it constitutional to deport immigrants for political speech?". Reason. Archived from the original on March 14, 2025. Retrieved March 15, 2025. Strossen points to decades of legal precedent and case law to describe the complexity surrounding the constitutionality of the 'catch and revoke' policy. In support of immigrants' First Amendment rights is Justice Frank Murphy's concurring opinion in the 1945 case, Bridges v. Wixon... However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that legal aliens could be deported for membership in the Communist Party without violating the First Amendment in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy.
↑ "New Yorkers Protest as White House Defends Arrest of Columbia Activist". The New York Times. March 12, 2025. Retrieved March 12, 2025. He chided reporters for asking repeatedly about the arrest. "What I'm finding surprising is the level of support you're all displaying, but I didn't see that support for me," he said, alluding to his five-count criminal indictment.
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