Plainclothes agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a recently graduated leader of the Palestine solidarity protests at Columbia University on Saturday, according to his lawyer and student organizers, sparking fears of a long-feared federal crackdown on campus activists.
Mahmoud Khalil, who is Palestinian, had just entered the lobby of his university-owned apartment building near the New York campus when agents approached him and his eight-months-pregnant wife, asking for his identification and saying he was under arrest because the State Department had revoked his student visa.
The officers did not present a physical warrant, though claimed they had one on a cell phone, student activists said.
The agents appeared surprised when Khalil’s attorney told them over the phone he was a lawful permanent resident with a green card.
The agents then claimed that status had been revoked, too.
Khalil is now in immigration detention in New Jersey.
Agents also allegedly threatened his wife with arrest unless she left the scene, and hung up on Khalil’s attorney when she asked for a copy of the warrant, his lawyer said.
“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained,” his attorney, Amy Greer, told The Associated Press. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats.”
Supporters expressed shock at the arrest.
“We are living in a police state,” historian Zachary Foster, a friend of Khalil, wrote on X. “Protesting a genocide now lands you in prison in the US.”
Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of the student protest encampment at Columbia last spring, serving as a negotiator between the students and the administration and often appearing in national media interviews.
Student activists said in a public campaign that the arrest came after months of “zionist harassment campaigns, fueled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission,” against the protest leader.
“Columbia’s continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible,” they wrote in a press release. “A Palestinian student and member of the community has been abducted and detained without the physical demonstration of a warrant or officially filed charges.”
University policy states that “in general, ICE agents must have a judicial warrant or subpoena to access non-public areas,” though in “exigent circumstances” agents can access such areas without a warrant, and staff are discouraged from intervening.
The university declined to answer specific questions from The Independent, including whether it was shown a warrant by the ICE officers before the arrest.
“There have been reports of ICE around campus,” the university wrote in a statement. “Columbia has and will continue to follow the law. Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including University buildings.”
The State Department told The Independent it cannot comment on individual visa cases because they are confidential under U.S. law.
The White House and Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and removal operations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
More than 171,000 people have signed an online petition calling for Khalil’s release by Sunday afternoon.
The arrest comes follows reports that the Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to scrape social media in search of students perceived to support Hamas, part of a program to “catch and revoke” their student visas.
In January, the Trump administration signed an execute order proclaiming it would “deport” all “resident alien” (non-citizen) college students who joined the protests against the Israeli war in Gaza.
Donald Trump frequently argues such protests are inherently antisemitic and filled with “Hamas sympathizers,” though the thousands of students who partook in such demonstrations across virtually all U.S. states have a wide range of views and many are Jewish themselves.
Columbia, as one of America’s elite university institutions, situated in the country’s media capital, was among the most watched campuses during the heights of the student protest movement last spring.
Hundreds of students were arrested last May when campus officials called the New York Police Department after students occupied a university building.
Since then, the school has continued to grapple with how to protect both student speech and minority groups from discrimination and harassment.
Some have alleged the school has sought to silence pro-Palestinian sentiment, while others claim it hasn’t done enough to stop campus antisemitism.
Prior to his arrest, Khalil was among a group of student activists reportedly investigated under a newly created Office of Institutional Equity.
The activists say their alleged offenses ranged from social media posts in support of Palestinians to joining unauthorized protests.
“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 in a previous interview this month.
“They just want to show Congress and right-wing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” he added. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”
In February, Columbia’s sister school Barnard College expelled three students for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests, the first such expulsions in decades.
This week, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia, claiming the school hadn’t done enough to stop campus antisemitism.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Friday.
“For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” she said.
The Trump administration has also directed agencies conducting investigations to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, a hotly debated stance which holds that criticizing Israel can be considered inherently antisemitic.
Some civil rights advocates like the ACLU have warned that the definition is “misguided” and will result in the “censoring legitimate political speech that criticizes the Israeli government.”
