What to know about ICE arresting Palestinian student activist leading Columbia University protests
Agents told Mahmoud Khalil’s attorney that they were revoking Khalil’s green card. He is legally considered a permanent resident.
ICE arrested the Palestinian student activist who helped organize Columbia University’s solidarity encampment on campus last year.
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student until December, was inside campus housing Saturday night when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers entered and took him into custody, according to his attorney.
Agents told Khalil’s attorney that they were revoking Khalil’s green card. He is legally considered a permanent resident.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed Khalil’s arrest and said it was in fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism. The Trump administration says the nationwide protests in solidarity with Gaza are antisemitic rather than First Amendment-protected demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians.
It marks the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined the protests against the war last spring.
Here’s what we know.
Who is Mahmoud Khalil?
Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and received his master’s degree last semester.
He was born in Syria, is a permanent U.S. resident with a green card, and is married. He and his wife are expecting a child this spring. They live in a university-owned apartment complex near campus.
Khalil played a key role as a student negotiator, bargaining with university officials over an end to the tent encampment erected on campus last spring. It made him one of the most visible activists of the movement, prompting calls from pro-Israel activists in recent weeks for the Trump administration to begin deportation proceedings against him.
Why did ICE arrest Khalil?
ICE agents told Khalil’s attorney, Amy Greer, that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke his student visa. When Greer told the agents Khalil doesn’t have a student visa and that he is a permanent president with a green card, an agent on the phone told Greer they’d revoke that instead.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the arrest was directly connected to Khalil’s role in the protests, alleging he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
What happened during the arrest?
The ICE agents confronted Khalil and his wife when they entered the couple’s apartment building. They reportedly told Khalil’s wife — who is in her eighth month of pregnancy — that they’d arrest her if she didn’t leave her husband and go to their apartment, according to Zeteo.
Agents refused to initially tell Greer why Khalil was being detained and at one point hung up on the attorney, she said.
What does Trump’s executive order against antisemitism say?
In January, Trump signed an executive order against antisemitism that targeted what he described as “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”
Trump said the order mandates action to protect Jewish students from discrimination and lays out how some student protests could be considered efforts to support terrorism. Critics say equating students expressing solidarity with Gaza to an act of terrorism is extremely dangerous and that Trump’s executive order is an overreach and unconstitutional.
Trump has also threatened to revoke federal funding from universities that allow what he has called “illegal” protests on campus.
What has Columbia said about Khalil’s arrest?
A Columbia University spokesperson said law enforcement agents must produce a warrant before entering university property. The spokesperson wouldn’t say if the school had received a warrant ahead of Khalil’s arrest.
They declined to comment on Khalil’s detention.
On Friday, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University, along with nine other universities that had pro-Gaza demonstrations, claiming the schools failed to take steps against antisemitism.
Where is Khalil now?
Greer, Khalil’s attorney, said she was told he was being held at an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, N.J.
But when Khalil’s wife tried to visit Sunday, she learned he was not there. Greer said she still did not know Khalil’s whereabouts as of Sunday night.
“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” Greer told the Associated Press. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”
According to ICE’s online detainee tracker, as of Monday morning Khalil was being held in a detention center in Louisiana.
Can green cards be revoked?
In a message shared on X Sunday evening, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Trump’s administration has claimed that protest participants forfeited their right to remain in the country by supporting Hamas.
The Department of Homeland Security can initiate deportation proceedings against green card holders for a broad range of alleged criminal activity, including supporting a terror group.
But the detention of a legal permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime marks an extraordinary move with an uncertain legal foundation, immigration experts say.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.