ICE arrests Palestinian leader of Columbia's anti-Israel protests, revoking student visa and green card: lawyer

https://nypost.com/2025/03/09/us-news/ice-arrests-palestinian-leader-of-
columbias-anti-israel-protests-lawyer/

President Trump is giving this anti-Israel campus rabble-rouser a ticket 
to study abroad — for good.

A Palestinian activist who led a coalition of twisted radicals seeking the 
“total eradication of Western Civilization” responsible for riotous 
protests at Columbia University and Barnard College has been arrested by 
ICE agents, according to his lawyer.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who completed 
his graduate studies at Ivy League Columbia in December, also potentially 
faces having his visa revoked and his green card canceled following 
President Trump’s crackdown on unrest at colleges, attorney Amy Greer said 
Sunday.

He was inside his university-owned apartment a few blocks from campus 
Saturday night when ICE agents entered the residence and took him into 
custody, Greer said.

Despite graduating months ago, Khalil, who earned his undergraduate degree 
in Beirut, still lived in school-provided housing due to a policy allowing 
students to remain on campus after graduating, a source told The Post.

He has remained active in recent disruptive protests, including last 
week’s takeover of the Milstein Library at Barnard College. Videos and 
photographs posted on X depict him holding a bullhorn near the library 
entrance and engaged in discussion with school administrators.

That protest featured violent propaganda flyers that purportedly came 
directly from the “Hamas Media Office,” including one pamphlet titled “Our 
Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” which justified the Oct. 7, 2023 
attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people — and in which women were 
repeatedly raped, whole families were executed and 251 hostages were taken 
to the Gaza Strip. 

Others at the Barnard library takeover passed around trading card-like 
photos of notorious Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by 
an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last September.

Ari Shrage, head of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, told The Post he 
was dismayed and concerned to see the literature that was being 
distributed.

“These protesters were handing out materials from terrorist organizations 
Hamas and Hezbollah. Every American citizen should be concerned when 
students are encouraging terrorist activities on US soil regardless of 
their nationality.” 

In recent weeks, Barnard College was the site of campus building takeovers 
for two consecutive weeks to protest the expulsion of a pair of students 
who barged into a Columbia class on modern Israel in January and tossed 
around pro-Hamas flyers.

One of the documents depicted an Israeli flag in flames and another showed 
an army boot stomping a Star of David.

In response to the administrators kicking the perpetrators off campus, 
dozens of masked protesters stormed Barnard’s historic Milbank Hall, the 
oldest building on campus, on Feb. 26, egged on by pro-Intifada group 
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine. 

A school security guard was assaulted as the violent mob forced its way 
inside, where protesters graffitied political messages ilke “free 
Palestine” and “Barnard expels students.”

A week later on March 5, around 200 demonstrators seized the academic 
nerve center of the elite private women’s college, Milstein Library, where 
they hung an Old West-style “Wanted” poster featuring Dean of Students 
Leslie Grinage and a shoddy effigy of Barnard President Laura Rosenbury.

The NYPD evacuated the building after a bogus bomb threat and arrested 
nine students from nearby schools — many of them privileged youths — who 
refused lawful orders to disperse.

As agents raided Khalil’s apartment, Columbia put out a statement 
addressing the presence of agents in the vicinity of the campus, and 
stated its intention not to cooperate with ICE’s actions except where 
required by 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,” the statement read in part.

“Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and 
supporting our student body and campus community.”

Soon after his detention, Khalil’s supporters issued a press release 
calling the arrest “a racist targeting” which “serves to instill fear in 
pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others.”

A petition demanding Khalil’s immediate release posted on Action Network 
garnered more than 349,000 signatures by Sunday evening. 

Last September, Khalil and Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which has 
vowed to escalate its tactics “until the empire crumbles,” were among 
those taking part in the campus takeover at the start of the school year. 

The coalition of 116 student groups at the Ivy League school — who call 
themselves “Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western 
civilization” — also led the charge in the violent raid of Columbia’s 
Hamilton Hall last April.

Local and state leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul condemned the 
protests, calling on school officials to enforce disciplinary codes and 
impose “swift actions” to punish wrongdoers, a source told The Post at the 
time.

Khalil told a Post reporter during September’s raucous protests that anti-
Israel student organizers were undeterred, and promised to ramp up their 
actions, including establishing future encampments.

“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli 
apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Khalil said.

“Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”

Last April, during the height of the encampment protests, Khalil told the 
Columbia Daily Spectator that he was not personally participating in the 
protests over concerns he would lose his student visa — which allowed him 
to remain in the US.

He was briefly suspended that month, but the suspension was reversed the 
very next day, he told BBC at the time.

“[They said] that after reviewing the evidence, they don’t have any 
evidence to suspend,” he said.

Khymani James, 20, a prominent spokesperson for the Hamas-cheering radical 
collective led by Khalil, was banned from campus in the wake of the April 
protests after a video surfaced of them expressing violent and hateful 
rhetoric towards Jews.

“The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to 
live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, 
Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” said James.

James later offered a tepid apology, but laid the blame at the foot of 
“right-wing agitators,” claiming they were targeted for being “visibly 
queer and black.”

Last spring’s encampment continued to expand until April 18, when Columbia 
president Minouche Shafik — who soon after resigned under pressure — 
finally called on the NYPD to enter the campus and break it up after 
protesters ignored warnings to leave.

Cops arrested 108 participants at Columbia, which sparked a movement of 
solidarity protests of similar encampments at university campuses across 
the country.

An ICE agent reportedly told Khalil’s lawyer Greer the agency was 
enforcing a State Department edict to revoke Khalil’s student visa as well 
as his green card, pursuant to President Trump’s recent pledge to deport 
foreign student “agitators” responsible for fomenting campus unrest.

The news comes just days after Trump announced plans to yank about $400 
million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia due to its 
noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and 
eradicated.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.