According to his lawyer, a prominent Palestinian activist helped lead the student camp movement at Columbia University was arrested by federal immigration authorities on Saturday night, claiming they were revoking their green cards as ordered by the State Department.
Mahmoud Khalil was in his university-owned apartment, from the main campus block of the New York Union of Private University, when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents entered the building and detained him and held him in custody.
One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were implementing a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. The lawyer said Khalil, who graduated last December, was a permanent resident of the green card in the United States, and according to the lawyer, they are revoking that, too.
The arrest was for Donald Trump vowing to expel foreign students and arresting “inciteers” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The government conducted a special review of Colombia and announced Friday it would cut $400 million in grants and contracts because the government is saying that elite schools failed to reject anti-Semitism on campus.
Greer said authorities refused to tell Khalil’s wife why she was detained for eight months. Khalil was since then transferred to an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“We can’t get more details about why he was detained,” Greer told the Associated Press. “This is a clear escalation. The government is following its threat.”
A Columbia spokesman said law enforcement officers must develop an arrest warrant before entering university property. A spokesman declined to say whether the school had obtained a warrant for Khalil’s arrest.
The news seeking comments is left to the State Council, the Bureau of Homeland Security and Ice.
Khalil has become one of the most obvious faces in the pro-Palestinian movement in Columbia. Last spring, Khalil was appointed as a negotiator on behalf of the students and met with university administrators regularly when students were erecting tents on campus.
When the courses resumed in September, he told the Associated Press that the protests would continue: “As long as Colombia continues to invest and benefit from Israel’s apartheid, students will continue to resist.”
Immigration courts can revoke green cards, but government departments do not have this power.
Last week, Axios reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio intends to revoke visas for foreign nationals who are seen as supporting Hamas or other terrorist organizations and use artificial intelligence (AI) to select individuals.
Khalil was part of several surveys of a newly formed university discipline committee (Office of Institutional Rights) according to records shared with the Associated Press.
In recent weeks, the committee has issued notifications to dozens of students, from sharing social media posts to supporting the Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.
“I have about 13 charges against me, most of which are social media posts that I have nothing to do with me,” Khalil said last week.
After Halil refused to sign a non-public agreement, he said the university threatened to stop him from graduating. But when he appealed to the decision through his attorney, they eventually backed off.
“They just want to show Congress and the right-wing politicians that they are doing something regardless of the students’ bets,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly about relaxing the office where Plasteen’s speeches.”
Columbia students started a tent camp protest on their campuses last spring, an idea that has attracted attention on dozens of campuses across the United States. In Columbia and many other colleges, their academic government convened relevant local police stations, and hundreds of students were arrested.
