United States immigration officials on Saturday arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia University graduate who played a leading role in organising the 2024 campus protests at the Ivy League school last year.
According to Khalil’s lawyer Amy Greer, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents told her that they would revoke his permanent residency — popularly known as the green card — in the US.
Khalil’s detention and the apparent attempts to deport him represent the most prominent instance of the US government crackdown on student protesters under President Donald Trump, who repeatedly threatened to target universities that are hubs of protests even before his election in November.
Since he was sworn in on January 20, Trump has taken steps to back his plans, including executive orders.
Last week, Trump launched a new tirade, threatening to halt federal funding for schools, colleges, and universities if they allow “illegal protests”.
“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,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
On Friday, the Trump administration pulled $400m in funding from Columbia University, accusing it of failing to combat anti-Semitism.
So what do we know about Khalil’s arrest, what has Trump done so far, can he compel universities to act against student protesters, and how might higher education institutions respond?
Who are the intended targets?
US Ambassador-designate to the United Nations Elise Stefanik shared Trump’s remarks last week in a post on X, saying “antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses”, confirming that pro-Palestinian protesters and speech critical of Israel are the targets of the president’s threat.
Under President @realDonaldTrump, colleges and universities will be held accountable. Antisemitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promises made, promises kept. @POTUS @realDonaldTrump @WhiteHouse pic.twitter.com/h9nq1gVJRO
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) March 4, 2025
Trump’s announcement comes after he signed a series of executive orders in January targeting alleged anti-Semitism on campuses.
In one directive, he pledged to deport foreign university students and staff involved in pro-Palestinian protests as part of the crackdown.
He also created a task force through the attorney general’s office devoted to combating alleged anti-Semitic speech, investigating universities that do not do enough to crack down on such speech.
The orders and threats come months after huge pro-Palestine, student-led protests swept the country last year as Israel’s genocide raged in Gaza. Students demanded an end to Israel’s military offensive, an end to US support for Israel, and for their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Columbia University was widely seen as the epicentre of the protests, which resulted in mass arrests and student suspensions, ending in the resignation of the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, several months later.
The demonstrations also spread to other universities, including Harvard, Yale, and the University of California.
On Friday — a day before Khalil’s arrest — the Trump administration announced that it was withdrawing $400m in research funding for Columbia.
“Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.
Who is Khalil, and how was he arrested?
Khalil, a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, graduated in 2024 from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He is married to a US citizen, and his wife is eight months pregnant.
He was arrested from his university residence on Saturday by ICE agents, the Student Workers of Columbia union said in a statement.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed the arrest, and in a statement to multiple media organisations, said Khalil was taken into custody as a part of moves made by the agency “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism”.
In the statement, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization”.
In a post on X on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio linked to a news report on Khalil’s arrest and said: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported https://t.co/oKba2Mmi3C
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 9, 2025
Greer told The Associated Press news agency that ICE agents who arrived at Khalil’s residence initially threatened to arrest his wife too. She said the agents had suggested that Khalil was being held at a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But on Sunday, when his wife tried to visit him there, she was told he was not being kept there.
Khalil was a prominent negotiator on behalf of student protesters as they demanded that the university divest from companies linked to Israel. An encampment set up by student protesters on the campus last year became the epicentre of a nationwide campaign at US universities demanding that Washington stop its unconditional support for Israel, amid the devastating war on Gaza.
Can Trump legally compel universities to stop protests?
“It’s complicated,” said Jenin Younis, a civil liberties and free speech lawyer.
“It’s hard to say that the tweet itself is unlawful since it alone isn’t enforceable,” Younis told Al Jazeera of Trump’s latest post threatening funding. “So, it depends [on] how the administration executes this particular threat, and it has not yet given details.”
Radhika Sainath, a senior lawyer at Palestine Legal, a US-based nonprofit, said the executive orders are not binding rules for universities to follow.
“This executive order sets up a framework to encourage – but not require – schools to spy on and report their non-citizen students and staff,” Sainath told Al Jazeera. “As far as we can tell, these will be non-binding guidelines with no enforcement power or pressure.”
Still, Trump’s directives are extremely concerning, experts said.
“The strength of these orders lies in their chilling effect,” Younes said, adding they are clearly intended to silence First Amendment-protected speech.
Fearing consequences, some universities may voluntarily clamp down on speech they believe will subject them to funding cuts, she said, and pressure students and professors alike into silence.
Universities received $60bn in funding for research and development in 2023, constituting 55 percent of their total budget for science and engineering research.
According to Sainath, this is the “most significant escalation in McCarthyite tactics from the Executive Branch regarding Palestine since October 7, [2023]”.
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at the nonprofit DAWN, says Trump’s threats are a “twisted new form of transnational repression”.
“Restricting free speech and expression by cutting state funds, or more accurately, creating a chilling effect by threatening to do so, is a hallmark of autocratic takeovers,” Omer-Man told Al Jazeera, adding that in his view, such tactics can be “as effective as outlawing unpopular political views outright”.
Were universities targeted under Biden’s administration?
Yes. Universities that witnessed pro-Palestine protests across the country were also targeted in multiple ways under former US President Joe Biden, who was critical of the student encampments.
University heads had tried, and largely failed, to quell the demonstrations, which often saw the police intervening violently, with videos emerging from different states showing hundreds of students and even faculty members being arrested.
At Columbia University, several deans resigned, as well as Shafik, who stepped down as president after she was summoned to a congressional committee over allegations the university had failed to protect students and staff from rising anti-Semitism.
After the questioning, Shafik allowed police on the campus to arrest students and faced angry calls to resign.
Trump now appears to be doubling down on targeting universities and students. He is “escalating the crackdown” on the Palestine movement and attempting to undermine the students’ and staff’s constitutional rights to speak out and organise, Sainath said.
Will the threats work?
Not on protesters, according to the experts.
Omer-Man said the unprecedented support for Palestine on US campuses was “so powerful precisely because students and faculty already faced consequences for speaking out against Israeli apartheid and stood up anyway”.
Students have continued to speak up for Palestine ever since Trump unveiled his executive orders.
Universities, though, are under pressure. This week, Columbia University was forced to reiterate its commitment to “combating anti-Semitism” after Trump’s administration said it could pull more than $50m in contracts between the university and the federal government.
A statement by federal agencies cited the school’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students”.
However, Omer-Man said young Americans have “never been dissuaded by violent attempts to bury the nation’s conscience”.
Sainath agreed.
“Students – and faculty – are continuing to speak out, often at great personal risk, as people of conscience have done throughout history,” she said. “Their voices are key in ending US support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is why Israel’s supporters are doing everything they can to stop this growing movement.”
How might universities respond?
It might be difficult for universities to legally challenge these executive orders, Younes said.
It could be “easier to challenge them in a specific case” once the government withholds funds or implements policies pursuant to the executive order, she said.
Sainath said it was important for schools to “stay on the right side of history here – they do not have to cooperate and indeed should not cooperate” with these orders.
Universities should resist pressure to engage in “racist, anti-Palestinian censorship campaigns and protect the right to academic freedom and free speech”, Sainath added.
