Palestinian activist arrest signals Columbia University 'collaborating' with Trump

The arrest and detention of a prominent Palestinian over the weekend from his home in New York City marks Columbia University's shift from a complicit actor to a collaborator with Donald Trump's policies, student activists have warned.

For months, American universities, including Columbia, have been facing accusations of accommodating "antisemitic" and "pro-Hamas" supporters - a slur used to describe pro-Palestinian protesters calling for an end to what has been called a "genocide" in Gaza - even as universities have clamped down on protesters, including suspending students and faculty who have refused to halt their demands and allowing police on campuses to conduct arrests.

The arrest on Saturday and threat of potential deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the US, comes days after the New York Police Department was seen dragging students out of a sit-in at Columbia's Barnard College, where students were protesting against the expulsion of three students for protests and disruptions in 2024.  

Khalil graduated with a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December. He was one of the main negotiators for students during the student encampment for Palestine in the spring of 2024.

According to witness testimony, several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took Khalil into custody on Saturday night - in the presence of his pregnant wife - at the entrance of a university-owned apartment building where the family resides in New York City.

Khalil was first told that his student visa to the US was being revoked.

But when the agents were informed by his lawyer that Khalil was a green card holder and a permanent resident in the US, the agent said that they were revoking his green card, too.

Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson, told Middle East Eye, that Khalil's arrest was "in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism".

"Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization," Mclaughlin added.

'This is an existential threat not only for individual scholars but the future of the university'

- Professor at Columbia

Hours later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that the US would "be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported".

Neither Rubio nor the DHS provided any details as to how Khalil's activism at Columbia University, where he had openly played the role of a student negotiator with administrators, amounted to supporting Hamas.

On Monday, in a post on Truth Social, Trump described the arrest of Khalil as "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," Trump said.

Outpouring of rage

Response from the university community and activist groups has been swift. 

Several groups from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) to the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC) have issued condemnations and called for his release. 

JVP described the arrest and detention of Khalil as "outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional and straight from a well-worn authoritarian playbook".

By midday on Monday, a petition demanding that Khalil be released and that Columbia reverse a new policy allowing ICE to operate on campus had amassed more than a million signatures online. 

“As a professor and green card holder I feel appalled at the way in which this administration is terrorising educators and students by threat of unconstitutional arrest and deportation," one professor at Columbia University, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told MEE.

"This is an existential threat not only for individual scholars but the future of the university," the professor added.

Columbia University did not reply to MEE's request for clarity over the circumstances of Khalil's arrest, pointing instead to a statement on their website that "Columbia has and will continue to follow the law ... law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings."

Aiden Parisi, a postgraduate social work student, who was suspended by Columbia in June 2024 for participating in pro-Palestine protests, said the incident showed that the university's policies had become indistinguishable from Trump's tactics.

"They just continue to escalate and bring in outside forces such as the NYPD and now DHS to attempt to silence us and protect their own interests and profits of this genocide," Parisi told MEE.

"Columbia has moved from being complicit to now being just outright collaborators with this repressive state."

Parisi said that during the first Trump administration, Columbia was very loud and vocal about not collaborating with the administration and his fascist policies.

Students and faculty told MEE that Khalil's arrest together with the series of incidents that have taken place at Columbia and Barnard College had left the university community "disturbed".

They said that the university had created the conditions for an incident of this scale to occur at the institution that many see as ground zero of the student movement in the US.

"As the target of a relentless doxxing, stalking, and harassment campaign, Mahmoud was clearly targeted by Columbia in an attempt to prove their commitment to repressing the student voice which is overwhelmingly in support of Palestinians, just as the vast majority of the population of the US is," Noor Abualhawa, a Columbia law student, told MEE.

"Since October of 2023, the administration of Columbia has violated every norm and standard to target Pro-Palestine students. There is a new playbook made exclusively for the repression of pro-Palestinian movement, especially targeting students."

Last week, Trump said Columbia would lose around $400m worth of federal grants over what was described as “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.

But students say that Columbia had long capitulated to the demands of its pro-Israel trustees from the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, and that it had also allowed pro-Israel faculty to harass and intimidate students.

Several pro-Israeli social media accounts, including those belonging to Columbia faculty, had directly called upon the Trump administration to deport Khalil, the students said.

"After calling NYPD to brutalize and arrest its own students three times now, it is no surprise Columbia allowed DHS and ICE onto campus," Abdualhawa added.

Reigniting the movement

In the hours following Khalil's arrest, confusion reigned for hours as his wife, lawyer and fellow activists desperately tried to locate him.

Late on Sunday night, activists said that Khalil had been transferred to an ICE location in the state of Louisiana. 

The Student workers of Columbia said it was aware of multiple reports of ICE agents accessing or attempting to access the Columbia campus as well as undergrad dorms over the weekend.

The group said the developments showed the university had "abandoned its nearly decade-long commitment to being a sanctuary campus".

"This development also closely follows the Department of Justice’s announcement on the same day that it plans to cancel $400 million of grants and contracts with Columbia in retaliation for students protesting Columbia’s investments in Israel," the union said.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that the university would lose $400m in federal funding over accusations it hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism.

'This will only further spark our efforts in the movement for justice'

- Columbia student

Students said though the events of the past week have had a chilling effect on the campus, they are adamant that the latest crackdown will reignite a movement that has been struggling to reassert itself after authorities began choking student protests through a mix of arrests, suspensions and expulsions.

"This will impact the movement for Palestine in the exact opposite way hoped by the Trump administration and Columbia University," Abualhawa said.

"Progressive organisations across the city are mobilising rapidly to demand Mahmoud’s release and to demand ICE out of our campuses."

"This will only further spark our efforts in the movement for justice. We will continue to fight for the rights of all students to speak freely against the horrors of genocide, and for Columbia to divest its billions in holdings for the profiteers that enable such horrific violence," Abualhawa added.