On Saturday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Gaza protests on Columbia University’s campus, at his apartment in New York City.
Khalil, who is Palestinian, is a permanent U.S. resident, but according to his attorney, Amy Greer, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents executed a State Department order to revoke his student visa and green card.
Khalil was a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and had been a lead negotiator for student activists during the Gaza solidarity encampment in the spring of 2024.
According to a statement by the group Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), at 8:30 pm two plainclothes DHS agents forced themselves into the home of Khalil and his pregnant wife, refusing to identify themselves.
One agent eventually showed Khalil a warrant on his phone, which prompted his wife to find his green card to present to the officers.
“When she returned, advising them of Khalil’s legal status and presenting them with Khalil’s green card, one agent was visibly confused and said on the phone, ‘He has a green card.’,” says the WAWOG statement. “However, after a moment, the DHS agents stated that the State Department had ‘revoked that too.’ Khalil’s wife then phoned his attorney, who spoke with the agents in an attempt to intervene. When Khalil’s attorney requested that a copy of the warrant be emailed to her, the agent hung up the call.”
Khalil’s exact current whereabouts are unknown, with his attorney saying she is unsure if he is being held in an ICE detention facility in New York or New Jersey.
Responding to a press inquiry from Drop Site News, DHS said reporters would “need to reach out to the White House” for answers.
Trump administration targets Palestine activists
Universities and local police enacted consistent crackdowns on Palestine protesters under Biden, but there have been growing fears that the Trump administration would use government agencies to directly target students. On the campaign trail President Trump told a group of pro-Israel donors that he would set the Palestine movement back by decades.
“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” said Trump at the event.
Shortly after he was elected Trump signed an executive order aimed at canceling the visas of foreign students who participated in the protests.
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said Trump in a fact sheet released by The White House. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
On Friday the administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, over its alleged inability to protect Jewish students from harassment. For years pro-Israel lawmakers and advocates have fought to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to stifle criticism of Israel and suppress Palestine organizing
Last week Axios reported that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-assisted “Catch and Revoke” program to cancel the visas of foreign nationals who support Hamas.
Reactions
Khalil’s detention was immediately condemned by human rights organizations and activists. Many criticized the Columbia University administration for acquiescing to the desires of the Trump administration, pro-Israel donors, and Zionist organizations. The school recently published a new protocol reversing the school’s previous status as a sanctuary campus status and allowing ICE access to the school without a warrant during “exigent circumstances.”
On Sunday, Columbia University issued the following statement in response to Khalil’s detention:
“There have been reports of ICE around campus. Columbia has and will continue to follow the law. Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings. Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community.”
In response to the new university protocol and Khalil’s arrest, Student Workers of Columbia (UAW Local 2710) issued a statement demanding university president Katrina Armstrong reinstate Columbia as a sanctuary campus and refuse to collaborate with the Trump Administration.
“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration’s assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances,” the statement reads. “We call on faculty, staff, postdocs, students, and all other workers at Columbia University to stand against the administration’s cooperation with the Trump administration.”
“Columbia allowed this to happen,” wrote a student activist on Twitter. “Columbia allowed ICE to abduct a Palestinian member of our community after an incessant vitriolic doxxing campaign started by our own campus zionists. Mahmoud’s wife is due in one month and they took him right in front of her. This is unbearable.”
Khalil had faced disciplinary action over his activism in recent months, being accused of misconduct just weeks before he graduated in December. Khalil says the school but hold on his transcript and threatened to prohibit him from graduating over his refusal to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but eventually backed down on the issue.
“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil told the AP just two days before his arrest. “They just want to show Congress and right-wing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students. It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”
“Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various zionist harassment campaigns, fueled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission,” reads a letter being circulated by the organization Deportation Defense. “This racist targeting serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others.”
Slice by slice they amputate your freedoms. But still the cry is, like the knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, “It’s just a flesh wound!”
There are large numbers Jewish individuals and Jewish organizations of conscience who have taken a principled stance on the “Jewish State” of Israel’s barbarity in Gaza and elsewhere. More Jews need to speak up and challenge mainstream Jewish organizations that continue to provide uncritical support for genocide, and purport to represent the entire Jewish community.
Not doing so will increase antisemitism because many do not distinguish between a Judeo-supremacist Zionist ideology that Apartheid Israel adheres, and the religion of Judaism. For Netanyahu and his war criminal cabinet, they—ad nauseam—declare that their actions are being conducted on behalf of all Jews. That the killing is being done in their name, for their security. When combined with self-declared Zionist billionaires turning the screws on universities to suppress antiwar protest, will inevitably stoke already rising antisemitism. Not a good situation.
Bring this issue to the Supreme Court ASAP! This issue is so simple any 12 year old can understand it. Demolish this Zionist tyranny at its root.
(And I bet Trump and almost everybody on his top team can see this.)
Professor at Center of Columbia University Deportation Scandal is Former Israeli Spy
March 11th, 2025
Alan Macleod
“The professor at the center of the Columbia University deportation scandal is a former Israeli intelligence official, MintPress News can reveal.
Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), was abducted by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Saturday for his role in organizing protests last year against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Khalil’s dean, Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo, head of the School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli military intelligence officer and official at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. Yarhi-Milo played a significant role in drumming up public concern about a supposed wave of intolerable anti-Semitism sweeping over the campus, thereby laying the groundwork for the extensive crackdown on civil liberties that has followed the protests.
Spooks in Our Midst
Before entering academia, Dr. Yarhi-Milo served as an officer and an intelligence analyst with the Israeli Defense Forces. Given that she was recruited into the intelligence services because of her ability to speak Arabic fluently, her job likely entailed surveilling the Arab population.
After leaving the world of intelligence, she worked for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. While there, she met and married her husband, Israel’s official United Nations spokesperson.
Although she is now an academic, she has never left the world of international security, making the subject her area of expertise. She has made a point of trying to lift women’s voices in the field. One of these was the then-U.S. Director of National Security, Avril Haines, whom she spoke with in 2023. But even though Khalil was a student in her school, she had nothing to say about his arrest. Indeed, rather than speak out on the issue (as activists have demanded), she instead chose this week to invite Naftali Bennett, prime minister of Israel from 2021 to 2022, to speak at Columbia. Students protesting Tuesday’s event were condemned by university authorities for “harassing” Yarhi-Milo.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/professor-columbia-university-scandal-former-israeli-spy/289231/
Even More Assaults On Free Speech To Silence Criticism Of Israel
Caitlin Johnstone
Mar 10, 2025
“Acting on orders from the White House, immigration agents have arrested a Columbia University graduate for deportation due to his leadership of campus protests against Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza last year.
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is reportedly married to an American citizen and had had permanent residency in the US, but his green card has been revoked by the State Department as the Trump administration works to deport everyone they can possibly get away with deporting for criticizing Israel.
This is the equivalent of the Australian government revoking the permanent residency of my American husband Tim and deporting him because of our work criticizing the Gaza holocaust. The suffering that can be unleashed by a policy like this in the United States is hard to fathom.
This comes as we learn that the US government will be using AI to compile lists of people suspected of expressing support for Hamas on social media, and as the Trump administration announces that funding will be killed for any schools which allow “illegal protests” in support of Palestinians on their campuses.
I have said it before and I will say it again: there is no greater threat to free speech in our society than Israel and the western governments who support it. Civil rights are being stomped out throughout the western world to shut down all criticism of Israel.
We’re now seeing escalations in western Zionism’s assault on civil rights on a daily basis. Pretty much every day I’m reading about at least one western government silencing criticism of Israel with some new authoritarian abuse. Zionism is the number one threat to free speech in our society.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/even-more-assaults-on-free-speech