| See also here. |
Khalil, a permanent resident of the US, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Saturday night.
A federal judge temporarily blocked his deportation, and Khalil is currently awaiting proceedings in a federal jail in Louisiana.
However, MEE has found that he previously worked as a programme manager at the Syria Office in the British embassy in Beirut from 2018 t0 2022.
Online records reviewed by MEE show that Khalil worked as a local manager for the Syria Chevening Program, a prestigious UK government international scholarship scheme, as well as for the Conflict, Stability, and Security Fund.
'LOVED BY HIS COLLEAGUES'
Former British diplomat Andrew Waller, who was a policy advisor at the Syria Office while Khalil worked there, told MEE that the US government's depiction of Khalil was false and defamatory.
"He went through a vetting process to get the job and was cleared to work on sensitive issues for the British government," Waller said
"It's outright defamation what Trump has done. Mahmoud is an extremely kind and conscientious person and he was loved by his colleagues at the Syria Office," he added.
"You couldn't find anyone who'd say a bad word about him, he was very good at his job."
The Chevening scholarship, which is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), describes its mission as being to "support UK foreign policy priorities and achieve FCDO objectives by creating lasting positive relationships with future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers".
Waller described it as a "flagship UK soft power policy".
"It brings the brightest students from around the world to UK universities. Mahmoud ran its Syria programme and interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants on behalf of the British government."
Khalil was also a "local staff political officer", responsible for providing the "contextual understanding and linguistic skills to translate meetings," Waller recalled.
"It's really interesting. Less than two weeks ago JD Vance is lecturing Keir Starmer about free speech, and then the US goes and kidnaps Mahmoud Khalil for organising student protests."
| Tweet responding to this story, |
So then the question becomes “ why did @10DowningStreet have a MI6 spy in America organizing/leading violent antisemitic riots and destabilizing universities/cities?”
— JW (@C130GuyBNA) March 12, 2025
Sounds like they may want Revolutionary War 2.0.
Court orders anti-Israel Columbia activist facing deportation to remain in detention
[IsraelTimes] Hundreds protest in support of Mahmoud Khalil outside New York court amid furious backlash against Trump administration crackdown
A Columbia University anti-Israel activist leader will remain in detention after an initial court hearing in New York on Wednesday that drew hundreds of protesters.
The protest organizer, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained by federal agents on Saturday outside his home in New York. The arrest was the first such detention in the Trump administration’s planned crackdown on university activists and set off furious backlash.
US District Judge Jesse Furman temporarily blocked authorities on Monday from deporting Khalil, 30, to weigh a legal challenge from his defense, and scheduled Wednesday’s hearing in lower Manhattan.
The hearing mostly focused on jurisdictional issues. Khalil, a green card holder originally from Syria, is being held in Louisiana and was not present. Khalil’s lawyers are seeking to have him returned to New York and be released under supervision.
During Wednesday’s hearing, attorney Brandon Waterman argued on behalf of the Justice Department that the venue for the deportation fight should be moved from New York City to Louisiana or New Jersey because those are the locations where Khalil has been held.
One of Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, told the judge that Khalil was "identified, targeted and detained" because of his advocacy for Paleostinian rights and his protected speech.
Kassem also told Furman that Khalil’s legal team hasn’t had any attorney-client-protected phone calls with him. The court ordered in a legal filing that Khalil be allowed hourlong calls with his defense on Wednesday and Thursday.
Kassem said Khalil’s defense will submit an updated lawsuit on Thursday, and Furman ordered both sides to submit a joint letter on Friday about when they will submit written arguments about the legal issues in the case.
Hundreds protested outside Khalil’s hearing on Wednesday. The demonstrators, many wearing masks and keffiyehs, carried signs with images of Khalil, and chanted for his release and in support of the Paleostinians.
Activists and speakers at the event hailed from an array of leftist and anti-Israel groups. Speakers tied Khalil’s detention to domestic issues including affordable housing, health care and poverty.
A speaker from the Democratic Socialists of America said the US was providing funding to "exterminate whole families in Gaza" instead of "ending homelessness."
Khalil has not been charged with a crime. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Khalil was detained for deportation due to support for the Hamas
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...terror group. Khalil attended a protest last week at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate, during which activists handed out pamphlets from the "Hamas media office."
"This is not about free speech," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
said on Wednesday when asked if Khalil’s arrest clashed with US President Donald Trump
...The Hero of Butler, Pennsylvania...
’s championing of the right to express opinions.
"This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with," Rubio said.
Trump has said Khalil’s arrest is the first "of many to come," accusing students across the country of being engaged in "pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity" that his administration "will not tolerate."
| Federal laws say aliens are inadmissible to the US, or "deportable," if they engage in terrorist activities, including anyone who "endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization." Green card holders are considered aliens. |
Khalil, who finished graduate studies at Columbia in December, was a leading organizer for the Columbia protest movement. Columbia protesters held disruptive demonstrations on campus starting soon after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, that have continued into recent weeks. Protesters have openly endorsed violence and US-designated terror groups, and Jewish and Israeli students and faculty have said the activists created a hostile and discriminatory environment. A university task force reported "crushing" discrimination against Jews and Israelis on campus.
Rhetorical support for US-designated terrorist groups is protected under the First Amendment if it is not coordinated with terrorists. Discriminatory harassment, targeted threats and incitement to imminent violence are not covered by free speech protections. Columbia protests have also seen unlawful conduct including property damage and vandalism.
Khalil’s detention is part of a broader crackdown on anti-Israel campus activism by the Trump administration, which says the protests infringe on civil rights protections for Jews. The administration cut $400 million in funding to Columbia, warned 60 universities they are under investigation for antisemitism, and a federal antisemitism task force plans to visit 10 campuses around the country, including Columbia.
| The NY Post was liveblogging events yesterday, and has an uninformative pastel sketch of Mrs. Khalil — all I can tell is that she is a hijabi. Also, further down, with photos: |
A middle-aged man in a black Roxy Music T-shirt was cuffed and bundled into a police van after allegedly snatching a beanie with the Puerto Rican flag off the head of a lone counter-protester.
Mahmoud Khalil supporters arrested after clash with NYPD as ‘pro-Hamas’ Columbia graduate faces deportation
About a dozen people were cuffed as they clashed with NYPD officers during a demonstration in support of former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil on Tuesday afternoon, police said.
Cops swarmed in to make arrests after throngs of protesters blocked a downtown Manhattan street, despite repeated warnings from police to clear the roadway.
One keffiyeh-clad rabble-rouser was tackled to the ground by a pair of officers during his arrest.
| An interesting tweet about the protesters — unfortunately X is not allowing embedding as I post this: |
Asra Nomani
@AsraNomani
🚨
@DPearlProject
Red Alert to media, the public, law enforcement, intel:
🚨 In minutes, as Mahmoud Khalil appears in a court hearing, videos will go viral from an 11 AM protest for Mahmoud Khalil. This is not a “grassroots” protest.
🚨 Organizers are part of a multimillion dollar anti-semitic network of 1,500 groups that I’ve identified in a Pearl Project database I’m working to make public.
🚨They represent the alliance of Socialists (red) with Islamists (green).
🚨 Don’t trust me. Study their own ad. These professional protestors are behind the pro-Mahmoud rally.
Here is a list of many of today’s professional protestors; all with a “one-state solution” to replace Israel with Palestine.
Self-described Socialists
🔴 The People’s FORUM - funded by China propagandist tycoon Neville Roy Singham
🔴 ANSWER - self-declared Marxists
🔴 Party for Socialism and Liberation
🔴 NODUTDOL - pro-North Korea
🔴 Jewish Voice for Peace
🔴 CODE PINK - friendly visits to Hamas and Iran; funded by Singham
🟢 PALESTINIAN YOUTH
MOVEMENT
🟢 Palestinian Feminist
Collective
🟢 Students for Justice in Palestine - started by Hatem Bazian at UC Berkeley
🟢 AL-AWDA - demands “right of return” of all Palestinians to modern-day Israel
| Related: Fox News has more about Asra Nomani and the Pearl Project here. Update at 5:00 a.m. ET: We have a name and photo for Mrs. Khalil, who looks both supercilious and unwell. More from the Times of Israel: |
Noor Abdalla admits she didn’t take it seriously when her husband talked to her about danger; university said to warn foreign students to keep a low profile on his arrest, Gaza
Two days before US agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University student and anti-Israel activist asked his wife if she knew what to do if immigration agents came to their door. Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife of more than two years, said she was confused. As a legal permanent resident of the US, surely he did not have to worry about that, she recalls telling him.
“I didn’t take him seriously. Clearly I was naive,” Abdalla, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, told Reuters in her first media interview.
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and came to the US on a student visa in 2022, getting his US permanent residency green card last year.
US Department of Homeland Security agents handcuffed her husband on Saturday in the lobby of their university-owned apartment building in Manhattan. Khalil’s arrest is one of the first efforts by US President Donald Trump, a Republican who returned to the White House in January, to fulfill his promise to seek deportation of some foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement over its alleged support for terror groups and antisemitism.
Earlier on Wednesday, Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist in New York, sat in the front row of a Manhattan courtroom as Khalil’s lawyers argued to a federal judge that he had been arrested in retaliation for his outspoken advocacy against Israel’s military action in Gaza amid the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, in which invaders led by the terror group killed 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 251.
The judge extended his order blocking Khalil’s deportation while he considers whether the arrest was constitutional.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Khalil was detained for deportation due to support for the Hamas terror group.
“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers,” Leavitt said.
Khalil was a leading organizer for the Columbia protest movement. Columbia protesters held disruptive demonstrations on campus starting soon after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, that have continued into recent weeks. Protesters have openly endorsed violence and US-designated terror groups, and Jewish and Israeli students and faculty have said the activists created a hostile and discriminatory environment. A university task force reported “crushing” discrimination against Jews and Israelis on campus.
Abdalla and Khalil met in Lebanon in 2016 when she joined a volunteer program Khalil was overseeing at a nonprofit group that provides educational scholarships to Syrian youth. They started as friends before a seven-year long-distance relationship led to their New York wedding in 2023.
“He is the most incredible person who cares so much for other people,” she said. “He is the most kind, genuine soul.”
The couple is expecting their first child in late April. She said she hoped Khalil would be free by then. She showed Reuters a picture of a recent sonogram: a boy whose name they have yet to choose.
“I think it would be very devastating for me and for him to meet his first child behind a glass screen,” Abdalla said. “I’ve always been so excited to have my first baby with the person I love.”
The government has said it has begun proceedings to deport Khalil and is defending his detention in the court proceedings until then.
Related:
Mahmoud Khalil 03/12/2025 A Dozen Arrests Made at the Latest 'Free Khalil' March
Mahmoud Khalil 03/11/2025 Protesters call for campus takeovers as Columbia activist threatened with deportation
Mahmoud Khalil 03/11/2025 Judge blocks anti-Israel Columbia agitator Mahmoud Khalil from deportation as politicians come to his defense
Mahmoud Khalil 03/12/2025 A Dozen Arrests Made at the Latest 'Free Khalil' March
Mahmoud Khalil 03/11/2025 Protesters call for campus takeovers as Columbia activist threatened with deportation
Mahmoud Khalil 03/11/2025 Judge blocks anti-Israel Columbia agitator Mahmoud Khalil from deportation as politicians come to his defense