Mahmoud Khalil resumed his pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism at a New York City rally Sunday that decried the US strikes on Iran, days after he was released on bail from a jail for immigrants.
His return to activism came even as US President Donald Trump’s administration said it will continue its efforts to deport him.
Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate, was one of the most visible leaders of pro-Palestinian campus protests against Israel across the United States last year. The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported, as it considers their views antisemitic. Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March, facing potential deportation. He was released on Friday.
Khalil arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Saturday afternoon to cheers and ululations from friends and supporters. Khalil, 30, was reunited with his wife and greeted at the airport by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.
“Not only if they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine again,” Khalil said, holding a bouquet of flowers. “I just want to go back and just continue the work that I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.”
Ocasio-Cortez, speaking alongside Khalil at the airport, condemned the Trump administration for what she called “persecution based on political speech.”
“Being taken is wrong. It is illegal,” she said. “It is an affront to every American.”
“Free Palestine!” Khalil said with a raised fist as he left the airport.
District Judge Michael Farbiarz has ruled that the government can’t deport Khalil on the basis of its claims that his presence could undermine foreign policy. But the judge gave the administration leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application, an accusation Khalil disputes.
Since his March 8 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of Trump’s campaign to crack down on campus antisemitism, which has surged amid rising pro-Palestinian student activism against Israel over the war with Hamas.
At the time a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student coalition that spearheaded anti-Israel protests at the school.
CUAD has praised “violent resistance” by Palestinians, including, explicitly, the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. The group also hosted a number of pro-Hamas figures on campus, including Khaled Barakat, who was later listed by the Biden administration as a specially designated foreign terrorist.
In addition, Khalil served as a negotiator and spokesperson for the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia last year, and for students who broke into and occupied a university building, unfurling a banner calling for “intifada.” He is not personally accused of participating in the building occupation, however, and wasn’t among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations.
Following his arrest, US authorities transferred Khalil, an Algerian citizen who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents and previously worked for the British embassy in Beirut, to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation.
Hundreds of foreign students in the United States have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records.
The US early Sunday bombed three key Iranian nuclear sites, after negotiations with Iran failed to reach an agreement on its nuclear activities, and as Israel carried out a military campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure, which it says is an immediate and existential threat.