On the day he was to attend his graduation ceremony, federal immigration enforcement officers on Wednesday refused to let Mahmoud Khalil maintain his new child son at a Louisiana detention middle, the place the Columbia College graduate pupil stays dealing with deportation for his participation in pro-Palestinian campus protests.
It’s been greater than two months since Khalil was detained by brokers from the Division of Homeland Safety at his Columbia-owned condominium after returning dwelling from an iftar dinner with Abdalla, who was then eight months pregnant.
Mahmoud Khalil’s spouse Noor Abdalla (middle) leaves courtroom after a listening to in Newark, New Jersey, on March 28, 2025. (Photograph by Kena Betancur / AFP) (Photograph by KENA BETANCUR/AFP through Getty Photos)
The federal government has not accused him of breaking the regulation. As an alternative, it has cited an obscure provision in a 73-year-old regulation that empowers the secretary of state to order somebody deported if their beliefs oppose “compelling foreign policy” pursuits, which in Khalil’s case regards the federal government’s place on the Israeli-Palestinian battle. The Trump administration has framed help for Palestinians, which Khalil’s grandparents had been, as antisemitic and supportive of Hamas, which the U.S. and different Western nations have designated a terrorist group.
A day after he was taken into custody, brokers transported Khalil to the South with breakneck pace, setting him as much as attraction any courtroom orders to among the most conservative judges within the U.S. An immigration choose in April ordered him deported, which he’s interesting. The scholar activist’s attorneys are individually defending him in a habeas corpus case difficult the lawfulness of his detention in New Jersey.
“ICE has denied us even this most basic human right,” Abdalla, who gave start to the couple’s first youngster final month, mentioned in a press release Wednesday. “This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”
Khalil’s representatives, in a press release, mentioned that ICE’s refusal stood in distinction to the company’s directives about preserving parental rights and inspiring contact visits. They famous household visits are allowed on the immigration detention middle in Elizabeth, N.J., the place Khalil’s legal professionals say he must be detained relatively than in Louisiana.
“The government chose to arrest and detain Mahmoud thousands of miles away in the Louisiana detention gulags to punish him for his support for Palestinian human rights, and is doubling down on their retaliatory punishment by denying him the most elementary human contact with his wife and child,” Baher Azmy, authorized director of the Middle for Constitutional Rights, mentioned.
Khalil, who accomplished his research at Columbia’s Faculty of Worldwide Affairs in December, would have accepted his diploma this week. Since Khalil was taken into custody, the Trump administration has sought to revoke the visas of hundreds of worldwide college students throughout the nation, not solely efficiently, in lots of instances citing college students’ political views.
The Ivy League college has confronted criticism for agreeing to substantial oversight calls for from the Trump administration — like putting its Division of Center Japanese, South Asian and African Research below supervision and banning masks on campus — after the federal government pulled $400 million of Columbia’s federal funding. Different universities, together with Harvard, have vowed to struggle the administration in courtroom.
Columbia College Performing President Claire Shipman speaks through the graduation ceremony at Columbia College in New York on Might 21, 2025, (Photograph by JEENAH MOON/POOL/AFP through Getty Photos)
In the course of the protests, Khalil, 30, served as a negotiator between pupil protesters and Columbia directors. He has vehemently pushed again on descriptions of his advocacy as bigoted or supportive of Hamas, and his legal professionals have pointed to what he mentioned publicly on the matter lengthy earlier than his arrest, prefer to CNN in April 2024, together with that preventing hatred in opposition to Jews and advocating for Palestinians’ proper to self-determination are intertwined and an “integral part” of the motion.
In line with Reuters, citing figures from the Gaza Well being Ministry, which is overseen by Hamas, greater than 53,000 Palestinians, a 3rd of them below 18, have been killed by Israeli army bombing within the 18-month warfare that started after Hamas members stormed Israel’s border and killed roughly 1,200 folks, taking round 250 as hostages.
Greater than half 1,000,000 folks within the besieged area, which is about half the dimensions of New York Metropolis, are dealing with doubtlessly lethal catastrophic starvation as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities limits entry to help, in accordance with the World Well being Group.
Initially Printed: Might 21, 2025 at 6:03 PM EDT
