An anti-Israel activist and Columbia University graduate facing deportation under President Donald Trump’s administration will remain in detention for his role in organizing campus protests.
Mahmoud Khalil, who finished the requirements for a master’s degree at Columbia in December, will remain in detention in Louisiana until at least next week.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman determined during a Wednesday hearing that the U.S. government must allow the 30-year-old activist’s lawyers to speak with him privately on the phone, The Associated Press reported. The judge also gave Khalil’s attorneys and prosecutors until Friday to submit a joint letter outlining when they plan to submit written arguments about the legal issues in the case.
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The hearing mainly focused on jurisdictional issues, according to The AP. The lawyers for Khalil, a green card holder from Syria, want the activist to return to New York and be released under supervision. Wednesday’s hearing took place after the judge temporarily blocked authorities from deporting the protest organizer.
Khalil was not present at the hearing on Wednesday, as he remains at an immigration detention center in Louisiana, where he has been held after a brief stint in New Jersey. At the time of reporting, Furman determined that Khalil can remain in Louisiana, according to The AP.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil in coordination with the U.S. Department of State. The DHS noted that the arrest took place “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” the department stated. “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security.”
In response to the news of Khalil’s arrest, several Columbia University professors canceled in-person classes in solidarity.
According to emails shared by The Washington Free Beacon on Monday, three faculty members — English professor Joseph Albernaz, philosophy lecturer Ruairidh MacLeod, and an unnamed third — emailed students to cancel class, with Albernaz stating that he would give every student an “A” on an upcoming midterm.
The professor wrote in his email that he is “sickened” by the news of Khalil’s detainment, writing that he does not believe “this is acceptable at a university or in a society.”
“I cannot see how I can hold a typical class right now under these current conditions, nor how you can be expected to prepare for an exam, so I am cancelling in person class tomorrow and cancelling the mid-term scheduled for Thursday (everyone will receive an ‘A’ on the midterm),” Albernaz wrote.
Columbia University did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment about the faculty member’s actions.
Last year, activists at academic institutions throughout the country set up protest encampments and organized demonstrations in opposition to Israel’s war against the terror group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Columbia University was the site of one of these encampments, which resulted in activists taking over a building on campus. Jewish students also reported that they experienced antisemitic harassment from the protesters, and that they did not feel safe on campus.
Khalil told reporters that activists planned to continue protesting despite the arrest of more than 2,000 activists among the encampments set up on college campuses, as The Hill reported in August.
“What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways,” Khalil said, acting as a student negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest. “So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any — any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from Israel.”
“And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history,” he added.
Canary Mission, a group that works to expose antisemitism, shared a video to its social media page on March 6 that showed Khalil among the activists who took over a library at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate.
Activists at the protest handed out pamphlets from the “Hamas Media Office” that reportedly justified the terror group’s invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, which resulted in the massacres of over 1,200 people in southern Israel and sparked Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has claimed Khalil has personally handed out Hamas materials.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration canceled about $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, citing the anti-Israel encampments and harassment of Jewish students that have gone unaddressed. Trump had previously threatened to stop federal funding for schools that permit “illegal protests” and deport foreign nationals who help lead such demonstrations.
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” the president wrote on his TruthSocial page earlier this month. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
