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The Trump administration on Monday celebrated the arrest of a prominent Columbia University activist over the weekend, accusing him of sympathizing with terrorists for opposing the Israeli crackdown against Palestinians and vowing to detain many more immigrant antiwar protesters nationwide.
A lawyer for Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil said in court records that he was arrested around 8:30 p.m. Saturday as he and his wife returned to their university apartment after visiting a friend. He said a group of men in plain clothes approached Khalil and his wife and identified themselves as federal agents, according to court records. Officers also threatened to arrest his wife, a U.S. citizen who is pregnant with their first child, if she refused to leave, the records say.
President Donald Trump on Monday declared that Khalil's detention "is the first arrest of many to come."
In a social media post, Trump said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement "proudly" detained Khalil in compliance with executive orders to target noncitizens who, in his view, engage in activities that are contrary to U.S. interests. Without providing evidence, Trump accused Khalil and other activists of engaging in "pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity" and vowed to banish them permanently. "The Trump Administration will not tolerate it," he wrote.
He said he expects all American colleges and universities to comply, though he did not say what he would ask of them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was directly involved with pushing for the revocation of Khalil's green card, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a developing legal situation. Rubio threatened on Sunday to revoke "the visas and/or green cards" of noncitizen protesters who, he alleged, support Hamas, a designated terror organization. Protesters have said they oppose Israel's bombardment of Gaza, which Gaza's Health Ministry says has resulted in nearly 50,000 deaths. They also demonstrated against U.S. support for Israel, in retaliation for Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on that country.
The high-profile arrest begins to fulfill a campaign promise that Trump made to some of his donors and supporters to target student demonstrators and "throw them out of the country," using immigration enforcement as a way to stifle free speech and protests that made some Jewish people feel unsafe on campus. At the same time, Trump is trying to launch a mass deportation of millions of immigrants, an effort that was originally supposed to focus on those who are in the country illegally or who have committed a violent crime - but the targeting of Khalil suggests that the effort could also sweep up permanent residents and others who speak out against the president's views.
Khalil's lawyers filed a federal petition in U.S. District Court in New York on Sunday saying the arrest violated his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and due process and demanding his release. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman, an Obama appointee, barred the Trump administration from deporting Khalil pending a court hearing on Wednesday in New York.
The petition had asked the court to block ICE from transferring him outside of the area. But by Monday, immigration officials had moved Khalil to a detention center in Louisiana more than 1,300 miles away. His lawyers have filed an emergency petition to bring him back to New York.
The State Department did not answer questions about the agency's role in Khalil's arrest. The Department of Homeland Security, which the White House official said led the investigation into Khalil, has not disclosed the legal basis for his detention, beyond the executive orders, or the time and location of his immigration court hearing. An immigration court spokeswoman also declined to provide information about his hearing without his alien number, which is generally not a public record.
In the federal court filing, Khalil's lawyers wrote that the arrest follows "the U.S. government's open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel's assault on Gaza."
They said the arrest would have a "devastating effect on vital political speech, allowing a government agency to abuse noncitizens and then detain and maybe even deport the victims of its illegal actions."
"The U.S. government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech," Khalil's lawyers wrote.
Khalil's court filing offers the fullest accounting of his arrest and immigration history.
Lawyers said immigration agents descended on Khalil and his wife on Saturday at his apartment building and questioned him in the lobby. They identified themselves as Department of Homeland Security agents and said they were revoking his student visa.
Khalil and his wife countered that he had a green card - legal permanent residency - and showed them his papers.
The agent "looked confused when he saw the documents," court records said, and spoke with someone on the phone.
Agents then "arrested him anyway, saying that his green card had also been revoked, but providing no basis for the revocation," his lawyer wrote.
Khalil's lawyer, Amy Greer, said he called her during the incident and passed the phone to Homeland Security special agent Elvin Hernandez, who told her he had an "administrative warrant" and that the State Department had revoked Khalil's student visa. Greer said the agent stated Khalil would be taken to a federal building in New York and brought before an immigration judge.
When she asked more questions, Greer said Hernandez started to "grumble," and that he hung up the phone after she requested that he show her or the Khalil family the warrant.
She said the agents handcuffed Khalil before taking him away in an unmarked vehicle.
Khalil, who was raised in Syria, arrived in the United States in December 2022 on a student visa to pursue a master's degree in public administration from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, according to the court records. He wrapped up his studies in December and was set to graduate in May, the records said. He married his wife, a U.S. citizen, on Nov. 16, 2023, and became a lawful permanent resident in 2024. Their first child is expected in April.
He became a prominent student activist at Columbia - negotiating with campus officials and appearing in news outlets - after war broke out between the militant group Hamas and Israel, according to the court records. He said he felt compelled to speak up for Palestinian human rights and what he called Israel's "genocide" in Gaza.
Greer said that Khalil had been facing disciplinary action at Columbia University. She said in court records that he also had been experiencing a "profound doxing campaign" for the past two months and had asked Columbia University's interim president, Katrina Armstrong, for help.
The Friday before his arrest, he wrote to Armstrong saying people had falsely labeled him as a terror threat and called for his deportation. He said he was afraid he'd be harmed or targeted by ICE.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, called Khalil's arrest "genuinely shocking."
"Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world's most repressive regimes," he said. "Universities must recognize that these actions pose an existential threat to academic life itself. They must make clear, through action, that they will not sit on the sidelines as the Trump administration terrorizes students and faculty alike and runs roughshod over individual rights and the rule of law."
Separately, the Justice, Education and Health and Human Services departments and the General Services Administration halted about $400 million in federal funds to Columbia University last week, saying the university had failed to crack down on antisemitic activities on campus. The White House official said the efforts sprang from the executive order that Trump had signed in January focused on combating antisemitism on college campuses and that the departments had discretion to pursue the matters. "This all happened pursuant to the EO," the White House official said. "It wasn't the White House making calls at a granular level."
Many Jewish people on and off campus have asked Columbia and other schools to do more to stop protests over the Israel-Gaza war that sometimes included language and signs offensive or frightening to some Jewish people.
In an email to students at the School of International and Public Affairs on Sunday evening, Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo wrote that under university policy, Columbia will only provide nonpublic information in response to a valid judicial warrant or subpoena. She wrote that she had confirmed that to date the university had not received either in connection with this incident. "We take any actions concerning members of our community seriously and are actively seeking information. We have followed and will continue to follow the law."
She asked students to contact campus public safety if they see ICE agents conducting enforcement actions on campus - including in dorms.
The arrest upended campus life on Monday, in the middle of midterms, said students at the School of International and Public Affairs who said they initiated a letter-writing campaign on Khalil's behalf.
"Mahmoud is an incredible young man - he's a leader in our community and so well-respected," said Carly, a 24-year-old student who spoke on the condition that her last name be withheld for fear of retribution. "We don't want SIPA to pretend it's business as normal while our very close friend has been detained."
Khalil's lawyers released a statement Monday night from his wife, who they did not identify by name.
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