Donald Trump says a Palestinian student activist detained by federal immigration agents is “anti-American”.
Mahmoud Khalil, a postgraduate student at Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs, has been a prominent figure in the university’s pro-Palestinian student protest movement.
A federal judge in New York City ordered for Mr Khalil not be deported on Monday while the court considers a lawsuit challenging his detention. A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
Mr Khalil was detained at his Columbia apartment building in Manhattan in front of his wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, on Saturday evening.
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told him his student visa had been revoked but Mr Khalil has held a US permanent residency green card since 2024, his lawyer Amy Greer said. The Trump administration has not said what Mr Khalil is accused of or if he has been charged with a crime.
He has since been moved to a federal jail for migrants in Louisiana to await deportation proceedings, according to a US detainee database. Lawyers for the student have started a legal challenge against his arrest.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said: “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University.”
The US president said Mr Khalil’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come”.
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“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,” he said.
“Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathisers 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,” the president added.
Students say federal immigration agents have been spotted at student housing around Columbia’s Manhattan campus since Thursday, a day before the Trump administration announced it was cancelling $400m (£310.7m) in federal grants and contracts awarded to the university.
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The federal agents have been trying to detain a second international student, according to the Student Workers of Columbia labour union.
Mr Trump has singled out Columbia’s handling of the protests since returning to the White House, saying the university has allowed antisemitic harassment “on and near” its campus.
Mr Khalil and other activists from Columbia University Apartheid Divest said Jewish students were among the organisers, and say their criticism of Israel and its US government support is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
In the wrongful detention challenge filed in the Manhattan federal court on Sunday. Ms Greer said Mr Khalil’s arrest was motivated by his “criticism of US institutions that support Israel”, which she said was free speech protected by the US constitution’s first amendment.
“Even the threat of detention and deportation has a chilling effect on speech,” Ms Greer wrote.
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It is unclear when Mr Khalil will have a hearing in an immigration court, which is typically the first step in the deportation process.
Spokespeople for ICE and DHS did not provide details about his case on Monday.
Typically, expelling a person who has permanent residency in the US requires a high bar, such as that person being convicted of certain types of crimes.
In January, Mr Trump signed an executive order calling on the Department of Justice to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities”.
