NEW YORK — (AP) — President Donald Trump warned Monday that the arrest and possible deportation of a Palestinian activist who helped lead protests at Columbia University will be the first "of many to come" as his administration cracks down on campus demonstrations against Israel and the war in Gaza.
Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful U.S. resident who was a graduate student at Columbia until December, was detained Saturday by federal immigration agents in New York and flown to an immigration jail in Louisiana.
Homeland Security officials said Khalil’s arrest was a result of Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.
“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,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Khalil's detention drew outrage from civil rights groups and free speech advocates, who accused the administration of using its immigration enforcement powers to squelch criticism of Israel.
His lawyers filed a lawsuit challenging his detention. A federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported while the court considered his case. A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
Typically, expelling a person who has permanent residency in the U.S. requires a high bar, such as that person being convicted of certain types of crimes, but Khalil has not been charged with any crimes over his activities during campus unrest last year at the university.
He's the first person known to be detained for deportation under Trump’s promised crackdown on student protests.
Federal immigration authorities also visited a second international student at Columbia on Friday evening and attempted to take her into custody but were not allowed to enter the apartment, according to a union representing the student. The woman has not been identified, and it’s not clear what grounds the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had for the visit.
Trump has argued that protesters forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting the Palestinian group Hamas that controls Gaza. The U.S. has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Khalil and other student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest have rejected claims of antisemitism, saying they are part of a broader anti-war movement that also includes Jewish students and groups. But the protest coalition, at times, has also voiced support for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Islamist organization designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group.
The Republican administration on Monday also warned some 60 colleges that they could lose federal money if they fail to make campuses safe for Jewish students.
The Education Department said it would take enforcement action if the schools, including Harvard, Columbia and Cornell, fail to uphold civil rights laws against antisemitism and ensure "uninterrupted access" to campus facilities and education opportunities.
The Trump administration is already pulling $400 million from Columbia and has threatened to cut billions more.
Born in Syria to Palestinian parents, Khalil emerged as one of the most visible activists in the protests at Columbia.
He served as a mediator on behalf of both pro-Palestinian activists and Muslim students, a role that put him in direct touch with university leaders and the press — and drew attention from pro-Israel activists, who in recent weeks called on the Trump administration to deport him.
“He took a public facing role, and now he’s being targeted for speaking to the media," another student protester, Maryam Alwan, told The Associated Press.
More recently, Khalil, who also has an American citizen wife who is eight months pregnant, faced investigation by a new disciplinary body set up at Columbia University.
The Office of Institutional Equity sent him a letter last month accusing him of potentially violating a new harassment policy by calling a school official a “genocidal dean” online.
Khalil told the AP last week that he served as a spokesperson for protesters but did not play a leadership role in the group’s decision-making or have anything to do with its social media posts.
“They are alleging that I was the leader of CUAD or the social media person, which is very far from reality,” he said, using the acronym for the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
Khalil received a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs last semester. He previously graduated from the Lebanese American University in Beirut with a computer science degree and worked at the British Embassy in Beirut's Syria office, according to his biography on the Society for International Development's website.
Columbia University declined to comment on Khalil’s arrest over the weekend and also did not respond Monday.
Meanwhile, a few hundred protesters gathered across from a Manhattan federal building containing an ICE field office. Many held signs depicting Khalil’s face and handwritten messages demanding his release.
“By arresting Mahmoud, Trump thinks he can strip us of our rights and strip us of our commitment to our people,” Ibtihal Malley, a New York University student, told the crowd. “To that we say: You are wrong.”
Back on campus, Columbia sophomore Pearson Lund was among those who found the potential stripping of Khalil’s green card concerning.
“At what point does this process stop?” the physics student said as he entered campus through a security line guarded by city police officers.
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Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio in New York and Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.