He has become a cause célèbre on the left, a sign of President Donald Trump’s administration gone mad against anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters: Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University activist arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and set to be deported to his native Syria.
These are the facts as they are usually presented when the case is discussed, although they don’t quite do justice to the totality of the case: On Saturday, as Fox News reported, Khalil was arrested at his university-owned apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan Saturday by ICE, which said that his green card and student visa were being revoked.
In a Truth Social post, President Trump said that the case of Khalil, a Palestinian raised in Syria, should serve as caution to other “terrorist sympathizers.”
“This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in the Monday post.
“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”
Also on Monday, The New York Times noted, a federal judge in Manhattan issued a stay on the deportation of Khalil pending the review of a challenge to his detention. Meanwhile, everyone from student activists to the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee has been adopting Khalil’s case as the cause of the moment:
Free Mahmoud Khalil. pic.twitter.com/o9AkeXaYyh
— Senate Judiciary Democrats ???????? (???? now on bsky) (@JudiciaryDems) March 10, 2025
So, is this a case of the Trump administration overreacting and punishing someone for protected First Amendment speech, or the left defending a figure that’s more problematic than he appears at first sight?
While they acknowledge one might not agree with his politics, the media has been presenting him in the most positive light possible: “Mahmoud Khalil, 30, who graduated in December from Columbia with a master’s degree from its School of International and Public Affairs, was arrested by immigration officers in New York on Saturday and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. Mr. Khalil, who has Palestinian heritage, holds a green card and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant,” the Times noted.
The Times also said that he was being detained “for helping lead campus protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians” in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack against Israel and subsequent war.
However, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted at National Review, seeing his actions in this sort of positive light involves a heck of a lot of squinting.
“Prior to earning his master’s degree last December from the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Khalil was very active in the pro-Hamas agitation on campus,” McCarthy wrote.
“Euphemistically labeled ‘protests,’ this agitation included unabashed antisemitism, an illegal encampment on campus, and the forcible occupation of Hamilton Hall — the latter provocations were finally ended by the New York City Police Department after temporizing by university officials.”
Generally speaking, resident aliens who participate in illegal actions that require the NYPD to forcibly intervene may, yes, find themselves in trouble with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It doesn’t help, either, that Columbia’s “protests” (there aren’t air quotes emphatic enough to go around that word) were fueled by an undeniable air of anti-Semitism that Khalil certainly didn’t discourage.
However, as McCarthy noted, the fact that Khalil has a green card complicates things, inasmuch as he could argue that his First Amendment rights are essentially the same as an American citizen’s. Anti-Semitism may be loathsome, but it’s still free speech.
There are some caveats to this, however. For one, as Fox News noted, the Department of Homeland Security has said that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” In addition, DHS, the State Department, and the Department of Justice said they’d discovered “antisemitic and hateful” posts Khalil made on social media, in addition to organizing protests of an anti-Semitic nature.
Khalil is also a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD, a group that became briefly infamous nationwide for the antics of another member, Khymani James — a Columbia student who declared in a livestream with university officials that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
Meet Khymani James, a student leader of Columbia University’s anti-Israel Gaza Solidarity Encampment who openly states that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”
He made the comments during a meeting with the school that he live-streamed.
We put together the highlights: pic.twitter.com/JFlxnRkNC2
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) April 25, 2024
These comments were made in January when he said he was “very comfortable calling for those people to die.” CUAD initially apologized for James’ remarks — but then rescinded its apology in October, according to The National Desk, saying it was “neglecting the mental and physical safety of Khymani.”
“In light of this, we, as CUAD organizers, want to apologize first and foremost to Khymani,” the group said. “The anti-blackness and queerphobia that Khymani experienced, and continues to experience, from neo-liberals, neo-liberal media, and fascists is disgusting.”
As a member of CUAD and a negotiator on behalf of Columbia’s student activist rabblement with the university officials, a very good argument could be made that Khalil was not only a member of but a negotiator for a domestic terror organization.
In addition, at one point, Khalil was employed with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, as a public affairs officer for “Palestine Refugees.” There is, of course, no generally recognized nation-state of Palestine — but then, that’s the problem with UNRWA, which has considerable links with Hamas and has effectively been de-recognized as a legitimate arm of the United Nations by the Trump administration. Considering that Hamas is, of course, a designated terror organization, this would also make his presence within the United States problematic.
Furthermore, it’s not as if these activities stopped when the majority of the protests on Columbia’s campus ended last year. Here’s him taking part in an activist takeover of a building at Barnard College just last week in which pro-terror propaganda was clearly visible:
There’s footage of Mahmoud Khalil engaging in criminal activity just last week, when he helped take over a Barnard College academic building that was then littered with terrorist propaganda.
Don’t let them gaslight you into silence pic.twitter.com/ThVReUokO2
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) March 10, 2025
As CNN reported, the Trump administration is relying on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act which states that “[a]n alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
Speaking generally, Khalil has been both an organizer and galvanizing force behind the protests at Columbia which have effectively terrorized the Jewish community at the Ivy League university, something that Education Secretary Linda McMahon noted in a statement earlier this month when it announced the cancelation of $400 million in grants to the New York City school.
“Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses – only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,” McMahon said.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”
Specifically, the “reasonable ground[s]” to believe that Khalil’s presence in the United States might “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” is evident in his associations: CUAD and UNRWA’s “Palestine Refugees” program.
Both of these groups, if not explicitly terror-linked (and one could make very good arguments that they are), express sympathy and solidarity with terror groups and/or make threats indistinguishable from those made by groups labeled by America as terrorist organizations. Green card or no green card, Khalil is still an alien and subject to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides not only ample grounds for his expulsion but lays out in detail why foreign nationals with extremist ties like Khalil shouldn’t be in these United States.
Whatever the case, don’t expect Khalil’s deportation to be wrapped up soon, no matter how clear you think the Immigration and Nationality Act is on the matter: “If the judge decides the allegations are sustained, the person in custody can still apply for relief, but the whole process can drag on for months, according to Camille Mackler, founder and executive director of Immigrant ARC, a coalition of legal service providers in New York,” CNN reported.
“There is a question of whether due process is going to happen here or for anyone else,” Mackler told CNN. “We are seeing the Trump administration use the power of government to go after people or institutions they do not like or agree with. In a free society that shouldn’t happen.”
And this, of course, will be the line: In a free society, non-citizen immigrants should be able to say whatever they want, including allegedly advocating for terror groups and individuals who are perfectly happy to see people killed based on their ethnicity. Believe what you want about his rights, but make no mistake: Khalil is a radical, and not a peaceable one, and one who makes common cause with extremists somehow less peaceable than himself.
That being said, the Trump administration doesn’t appear to be moved by this line of attack.
“This administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during a Tuesday media briefing. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for siding with terrorists, period.”
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