US courtroom quickly blocks effort to deport Gaza protest chief

A federal choose has quickly blocked the Trump administration’s try to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested over the weekend by immigration brokers.

Mr Khalil, a Columbia College graduate and everlasting US resident, performed a key function in final yr’s Gaza warfare protests on the Ivy League campus in New York Metropolis.

The arrest is a part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters on school campuses, in what he referred to as “the primary arrest of many to come back”.

Protesters gathered in New York Metropolis on Monday afternoon pushing for Mr Khalil’s launch and condemning the Trump administration’s actions.

“Now we’re going through a horrifying actuality that our personal scholar, a member of the Columbia group, has grow to be a political prisoner right here in the USA,” Columbia College Professor Michael Thaddeus mentioned in a press release.

The choose set a listening to for Wednesday the place Syrian-born Mr Khalil is predicted to make an look, in line with courtroom paperwork.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers knowledgeable Mr Khalil they had been revoking his scholar visa and inexperienced card upon taking him into custody on Saturday, his lawyer mentioned.

The Division of Homeland Safety accused the previous scholar of “main actions aligned to Hamas” however offered no particulars.

The BBC has requested the company for additional info on the allegations.

Trump has beforehand acknowledged that international college students discovered to be “terrorist sympathisers” would face deportation. Mr Khalil is the primary recognized detainee underneath this coverage.

His lawyer, Amy Greer, condemned his detention as “horrible and inexcusable”, calling it a part of “the US authorities’s open repression of scholar activism and political speech”.

Mr Khalil has not been charged with any crime.

ICE brokers detained him at his university-owned Manhattan house and initially positioned him in a New Jersey immigration facility earlier than transferring him to a detention centre in Jena, Louisiana, in line with ICE data.

His lawyer claims ICE additionally threatened to arrest his spouse, an American citizen who’s eight months pregnant. When she tried to go to him in New Jersey, officers informed her he was not there.

Columbia College acknowledged that legislation enforcement can enter campus property with a warrant however denied that college management had invited ICE brokers.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed the administration’s stance, posting on X: “We will probably be revoking the visas and/or inexperienced playing cards of Hamas supporters in America to allow them to be deported.”

The Trump administration introduced final week it was rescinding $400m (£310m) in federal grants to Columbia, accusing it of failing to struggle antisemitism on campus.

Columbia was the epicentre final yr of pro-Palestinian scholar protests nationwide towards the warfare in Gaza and US help for Israel.

Mr Khalil was lead negotiator for Columbia College Apartheid Divest when its protesters arrange an enormous tent encampment on the college garden in protest towards the Gaza warfare.

He later informed the BBC he had been quickly suspended by the college, the place he was a graduate scholar on the College of Worldwide and Public Affairs.

New York Civil Liberties Union President Donna Lieberman referred to as his deportation “focused retaliation and an excessive assault on the First Modification.”

New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James mentioned she was “extraordinarily involved” and monitoring the case.

Some Jewish college students at Columbia declare that protest rhetoric generally crossed the road into antisemitism, whereas others have joined the the pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Carly, a Jewish-American graduate scholar at Columbia and a buddy of Mr Khalil, informed the BBC that the detainee was a “very, very caring soul”.

“He has been very focused on-line and simply seeing how he has been so misrepresented, it’s extremely painful, as somebody who is aware of him on a private degree,” mentioned Carly, who declined to share her surname for privateness causes.

Talking on Fox Information, Trump’s border tsar Tom Homan alleged that Mr Khalil had violated the phrases of his visa by “locking down buildings and destroying property”.

The Israeli army launched its marketing campaign towards Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border assault into Israel on 7 October 2023, which left about 1,200 individuals lifeless and 251 taken hostage.

Greater than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s army motion, in line with the Hamas-run well being ministry.

With extra reporting from Nada Tawfik