A student who played a major role in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York last year was detained by federal immigration officials, his lawyer said.
Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria and is a leading student negotiator at the campus camp on the west side of Manhattan.
His attorney, Amy Greer, told the BBC that Mr Khalil was at his university-owned home when Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer (ICE) agents detained him on Saturday.
Colombia was a national protest against the Gaza war and U.S. support for Israel last year.
The BBC contacted the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and Columbia University on Sunday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio later posted a news report on X about Mr. Khalil’s arrest and said: “We will revoke the visa and/or green card of the U.S. Hamas supporters in order to deport him.”
Ms Greer said the Icefield Agent told Mr. Khalil that his student visa had been revoked, but she said her client was a legal permanent resident, possessing a green card and marrying a U.S. citizen.
“Initially, we were told this morning that he had been transferred to a iced family in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” Ms. Greer said.
“But when his wife – an eight-month-old American citizen, was pregnant, was also threatened with arrest by ice agents last night, when he tried to visit him there, she was told he was not detained there.”
She said she did not know where Khalil is currently, although searches by online detainees on the ICE website showed that a man named Mahmoud Khalil was held at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Center in New Jersey.
Ms. Greer said they heard that Mr. Khalil could be transferred to Louisiana without adding details.
The lawyer said what happened to her client was “terrible, unforgivable, and wrong-error”.
During the protest last summer, Mr Khalil said he was negotiating with university administrators on behalf of student protesters.
They set up a huge tent camp on the university lawn to protest the Gaza war.
Some students also seized control of an academic building for hours before police entered the campus to arrest them. Mr. Khalil is not in that group.
Later, he told the BBC that he was temporarily suspended from the university and that he was a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Mr. Harrier’s detention follows President Donald Trump’s executive order in January to warn anyone involved in “pro-lawyer protests” and “Hamas sympathizers on university campuses” to be deported.
Some Jewish students in Colombia say that the rhetoric at the demonstrations sometimes surpassed anti-Semitism. Other Jewish students on campus also joined the pro-Palestine protests.
The Colombian Jewish Alumni Association said in a thread on X that it welcomed reports that it would revoke Harrier’s green card, calling him a “chaotic man” in Colombia.
The Trump administration announced last week that it would withdraw $400 million (£310 million) of federal grants to Colombia, accusing it of failing to fight anti-Semitism on campus.
“Cancelization of these funds will immediately impact the university’s research and other critical functions,” Colombia interim president Katrina Armstrong said in a campus-wide email on Friday.
The Israeli military launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, launching a campaign against Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people and 251 people were taken hostage.
According to the Hamas Party Health Ministry, more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza died in Israeli military operations.
