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An activist who was a key organizer of the pro-Palestinian scholar protest motion at Columbia College was arrested by ICE over the weekend.
The effort to detain and deport scholar activists by President Donald Trump took a brand new flip as federal authorities arrested an activist who helped manage pro-Palestinian scholar protests at Columbia College. Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate scholar on the college till final December, was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers final Saturday night at his university-owned condo. In line with his lawyer, Amy Greer, Kahlil is a authorized inexperienced card resident of america. In addition they threatened to arrest his spouse, an American citizen who’s eight months pregnant.
Division of Homeland Safety Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Khalil’s arrest on Sunday evening to the press. “Khalil led actions aligned to Hamas, a delegated terrorist group,” she stated. “ICE and the Division of State are dedicated to implementing President Trump’s government orders and to defending U.S. nationwide safety.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio went additional in a submit on X, previously Twitter, linking to a different article protecting the arrest and writing: “We shall be revoking the visas and/or inexperienced playing cards of Hamas supporters in America to allow them to be deported.”
“We are going to vigorously be pursuing Mahmoud’s rights in court docket, and can proceed our efforts to proper this horrible and inexcusable — and calculated — flawed dedicated towards him,” Greer stated in an announcement, including that Khalil’s arrest “follows the U.S. authorities’s open repression of scholar activism and political speech.” Greer stated that they have been not sure of his “exact whereabouts,” stating that they have been advised that he was being held in an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, however when his spouse arrived to go to she was advised he wasn’t there. She speculated that he might be as distant as Louisiana.
Khalil had served as a negotiator between college students who erected encampments at Columbia and college officers final spring. It made him a goal for pro-Israel figures who labeled him as antisemitic, together with Columbia College professor Shai Davidal who brazenly known as for him to be deported. The arrest has sparked outrage from a number of civil liberties teams. Columbia Legislation Faculty immigrant rights director Elora Mukherjee stated that revoking Khalil’s inexperienced card with no felony offense “in retaliation for his public speech, that’s prohibited by the First Modification of the U.S. Structure,” expressing it was a uncommon scenario.