Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student from Syria, for his involvement in organizing anti-Israel protests on campus.
The State Department ordered that Khalil, who is a permanent resident on a green card, have his student visa revoked. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News in a statement that the arrest was coordinated with ICE and the State Department “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” McLaughlin said.
Khalil’s arrest is one of the first known arrests prompted under Trump’s executive order.
“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 posted on Truth Social on Monday. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared on X on Sunday that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Columbia also opened an investigation into Khalil for his involvement in the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group. This comes after the Trump administration revoked $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University for its failure to take action against antisemitism on campus.
Last spring, Khalil served as a negotiator for students who established a tent encampment on Columbia’s campus. He also faced accusations of assisting in organizing an “unauthorized marching event,” which celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, and also played a “substantial role” in posting social media posts criticizing Zionism.
“I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” Khalil told the Associated Press last week. “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-Palestinian speech.”
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Barnard College, part of Columbia University, has seen an uptick in anti-Israel protests in the last few weeks.
Last week, dozens of students flooded a school library on Barnard’s campus, brandishing Palestinian flags and handing out literary pamphlets that came from the Hamas Media Office.
