A student who played a prominent role during the Pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York last year detained the federal immigration officials, says his lawyer.
Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, was a leading student negotiator for the campus on the west side of Manhattan.
His lawyer Amy Greer told the BBC that Mr. Khalil was in his home at the University, when he was taken to custody on the immigration and customs implementation (ICE) on Saturday.
Columbia was the epicenter last year by pro-Palestinian student protests across the country against the Gaza war and American support for Israel.
The BBC contacted the Department of Homeland Security, the Ministry of the State and the Columbia University to comment.
Mrs. Greer said that Ice agents told Mr. Khalil that his student visa had been taken away, but said her client was a legal permanent resident with a green card and married to an American citizen.
“At first, we were informed this morning that it was transferred to an ice facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” said Ms. Greer.
“However, when his wife – an American citizen who became pregnant for eight months and last night threatened him to arrest by ICE agents – tried to visit him today, he was told that she was not detained there.”
She said she was not aware of the current location of Mr. Khalil, although an internet search of a detainee locator on the ICE website indicates a Syrian -born person named Mahmoud Khalil in the detention of Elizabeth in New Jersey.
Mrs. Greer said that they heard that Mr. Khalil could be transferred further as Louisiana, without adding details.
The lawyer said that what happened to her client was “terrible and unforgivable – and calculated – wrong.”
During the protest last summer, Mr. Khalil said he had been negotiating with university administrators on behalf of student protesters.
They set up a huge campsite of a tent on a university lawn in protest against the Gaza war.
Some students also took control of the academic building for several hours before the police entered the campus to arrest them. Mr. Khalil was not in that group.
Later, the BBC said that the University had temporarily suspended it, where he was a graduate student at the School of International and Public Relations.
The detention of Mr. Khalil is followed by the executive order of President Donald Trump in January by warning that everyone involved in the “pro-Jihadist protest” and “all Hamas sympathizers at the college campuses will be deported.
Some Jewish students in Columbia said that rhetoric at demonstrations sometimes converted the line to anti -Semitism. Other Jewish students in Campus joined Pro-Palestinian protests.
Trump’s administration announced last week that it had abolished $ 400 million (£ 310m) in Federal Columbia scholarships, accusing her of not fighting anti -Semitism at Campus.
Temporary President Columbia Katrina Armstrong said on Friday at the e-mail in the whole campus that “the cancellation of these funds will immediately affect the research and other critical functions of the University.”
The Israeli army launched its campaign against Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross -border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people of the dead and took hostages 251.
More than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza were killed in the military action of Israel, according to the Ministry of Health in Hamas.
