Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyer accuses feds of ‘retaliation’ for ‘completely unprecedented’ arrest of anti-Israel protester
The Columbia University rabble-rouser detained by the feds will remain in a Louisiana immigration detention facility — as his attorneys on Wednesday blasted the “completely unprecedented” arrest.
During a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court, attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil said they haven’t been able to speak to him since he was transferred after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents grabbed him at his Columbia-owned apartment building Saturday.
His arrest has sparked outrage from the left, with hundreds of supporters taking to the streets outside the courthouse demanding the anti-Israel activist from Syria be set free.
“He was taken by US government agents in retaliation, essentially, for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the US government and of the Israeli government,” Kassem told reporters outside the Manhattan federal courthouse. “Those are the reasons why he was targeted.”
“He was taken by US government agents in retaliation, essentially, for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the US government and of the Israeli government,” one of his attorneys, Ramzi Kassem, said outside the courthouse.
“Those are the reasons why he was targeted. Those are the reasons why he was detained. And that’s also the reason why the government moved him to Louisiana.”
Judge Jesse Furman — who temporarily halted deportation proceedings against Khalil on Monday — said he would allow attorneys for the campus protest leader to have privileged phone calls with their client on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, said they wanted the case moved out of New York court, to Louisiana or New Jersey, where Khalil, 30, was first sent before being moved south.
The judge did not immediately make a decision.
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Kahlil’s attorney was given a chance to speak about the merits of the case or to request bail during the brief hearing, but declined.
Khalil, a green card-holding Palestinian born in Syria — and who received his graduate degree from the elite school in December — did not appear at the hearing.
After, Shazza Abboushi Dallal, a staff attorney at CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility) Project and one of Khalil’s attorneys, read a statement on behalf of Khalil’s wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant and “who does not wish to be named.”
“My husband was kidnapped from our home and it’s shameful that the United States government continues to hold him because he stood for the rights and lives of his people,” she said.
“I demand his immediate release and return to our family. His disappearance has devastated our lives.”
President Trump’s administration has argued the US has legal justification to deport Khalil for his role in the anti-Israel campus protests — where repugnant flyers glorifying Hamas were handed out.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the case was “not about free speech,” and that Khalil’s green card was being revoked because his actions undermine US foreign policy of fighting antisemitism.
Khalil acted as the lead negotiator between Columbia United Apartheid Divest (CUAD) — a coalition of student groups leading the demonstrations — and school administrators during last spring’s encampment protests that saw scores of tents set up for weeks on the Morningside Heights campus.
The encampment continued to expand until April 18, when then-Columbia president Minouche Shafik — who soon after resigned under pressure — finally called on the NYPD to enter the campus and break it up after protesters ignored warnings to leave.
Cops arrested 108 participants at Columbia, which sparked a movement of solidarity protests of similar encampments at university campuses across the country.
CUAD’s social feeds are littered with militant political posts decrying “Zionists” and the NYPD, as well as Columbia and nearby Barnard College.
On the group’s Substack blog, a chilling post from last November praised former Hamas leader Yahya Al-Sinwar — who was killed by Israel Defense Forces in the Gazan city of Rafah last October — as a “hero of the revolution.”
The post disturbingly called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood — Hamas’ name for the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack against Israel that killed more than 1,200 civilians — one of “the greatest moments of Palestinian resistance in the past decade.”
Khalil was participating when CUAD took part in two recent occupations of Barnard buildings in consecutive weeks — including a March 5 takeover of Milstein Library in which pro-Hamas literature that the White House held up as the grounds for his detention was distributed.
The upheaval was sparked after the expulsion of a pair of Barnard students last month for storming into a Columbia University class on modern Israel and distributing antisemitic literature, including a flyer depicting an army boot stomping on a Star of David.
Khalil was initially taken to an immigration jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey before being shuttled to Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana, where a source said he was being “staged” for removal from the US.
Furman’s move to pause deportation came after Khalil’s legal team filed a petition alleging ICE had detained him illegally, with the only given justification for his arrest so far being his involvement in the campus protests.
Pressed by reporters about the administration’s rationale behind his detention Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Khalil was being deported for allegedly circulating “pro-Hamas propaganda flyers.”
Trump, meanwhile, later said that he watched “tapes” of Khalil’s anti-Israel activism and wanted to “get him the hell out of the country.”
The president –who touted Khalil’s arrest as “the first of many” to come — pulled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia earlier this month, citing the Ivy League school’s noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.
Khalil’s attorney, Amy E. Greer, issued a statement Monday night saying her client was healthy and in good spirits, and “undaunted by his predicament.”
She castigated the federal government, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights and accused ICE of running a “shell game” in shuttling him to Louisiana.
Trump –who touted Khalil’s arrest as “the first of many” to come — pulled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia earlier this month, citing the Ivy League school’s noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.
Khalil’s side has until midnight Friday to fight the motion for the case to be transferred and the feds can give their final reply by Monday midnight.
— Additional reporting by Priscilla DeGregory and Jack Morphet
