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The fight of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, with American elite universities had only a few days, when federal immigration agents arrested Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil in his apartment building at Columbia University in New York in March.
During the more than three months he was arrested in a jail for immigrants in the rural area of Louisiana, the Trump administration intensified its battle. He arrested other foreign Pro-Palestinian students and revoked billions of dollars in research grants to Columbia, Harvard and other private schools whose campus were dragged by the Pro-Palestinian student protest movement, in which Khalil was a prominent figure.
“I do not regret face a genocide,” said Khalil, 30, in an interview in his Manhattan apartment, less than two weeks after the US district judge Michael Farbiarz ordered him to free the bail while defying the effort to revoke his legitimate permanent residence card of the United States and deport him.
“I do not regret defending the right thing, which opposes war, which is asking for the end of violence.”
He believes that the government is trying to silence it, but instead it has given it a larger platform. Upon returning to New York after its launch, Khalil was received at the airport by the American representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a political enemy of Trump; The supporters stirred the Palestinian flags while meeting with his wife and young son, whose birth lost in jail.
Two days later, it was the star of a demonstration in the steps of a cathedral near the Manhattan Campus of Columbia, punishing the university leaders. Last week, he appeared before encouraging the crowds with Zohran Mamdani, the pro-Palestinian state legislator who won the June Democratic primaries before the 2025 mayor elections in New York City.
“I did not choose to be in this position: ICE did it,” Khalil said, referring to the immigration and customs compliance with the United States who arrested him. “And this, of course, had a great impact on my life. I am still honestly trying to contemplate my new reality.”
His May graduation ceremony was lost and he left the unemployed prison. An international charity organization withdrew its job offer as a policy advisor, he said. The government could win its appeal and return to jail, so Khalil said that his priority is to spend as long as possible with his son and his wife, a dentist.
Khalil was born in a field of Palestinian refugees in Syria; His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, is an American citizen and became a permanent legal resident last year. When moving to New York in 2022 as a graduate student, he became one of the main student negotiators between the administration of Columbia and the protesters, who established tents camps on a grass of the campus, since they demanded that Columbia finish the investments of their $ 14 billion in the endowment in weapons manufacturers and other companies that support the military of Israel.
Khalil is not accused of any crime, but the United States Government has invoked a dark immigration statute to argue that Khalil and several other international pro-pixture students must be deported because their speech “otherwise” could damage the interests of the foreign policy of the United States. The federal judge who supervises the case has ruled that the main justification of the Trump administration to deport Khalil is probably an unconstitutional violation of the rights of free expression. The government is attractive.
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“It’s not about ‘Freedom of Expression,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesman, in response to consultations. “These are people who have no right to be in the United States on the side of Hamas terrorists and group organizational protests that made university campuses make insecure and harassed Jewish students.”
He urges universities to pay attention to their students
Khalil condemned anti -Semitism and called for Jewish students an “integral part” of the protest movement. He said that the government was using anti -Semitism as a pretext to remodel American higher education, that Trump, a Republican, said he is captured by anti -American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.
The Trump administration told Columbia and other universities that Federal grants money, mainly for biomedical research, it will not be restored unless the government has greater supervision of who admit and hire and what they teach, asking for greater “intellectual diversity.”
Unlike Harvard, Columbia has not challenged the legality of the revocations of sudden subsidies of the Government, and agreed at least some of the demands of the Trump administration to harden the rules around protests as a previous condition of negotiations on the resumption of funds.
Khalil called Columbia’s response heartbreaking. “Columbia basically gave the institution to the Trump administration, let the administration intervene in every detail about how higher education institutions should be executed,” he said.
The administration of Columbia has said that preserving the academic autonomy of the university is a “red line” as negotiations continue.
Columbia spokeswoman, Virginia Lam Abrams, said university leaders “strongly dispute” Khalil’s characterization.
“Columbia University recognizes the right to students, including Mr. Khalil, to talk about issues in which they believe deeply,” he said in a statement. “But it is also essential that the university maintain its rules and policies to ensure that each member of our community can participate in a discrimination -free campus community.”
Khalil urged Columbia and other universities attacked by Trump to pay attention to his students.
“Students presented a clear plan on how this campus can follow human rights, can follow international law, can be inclusive to all students, where everyone feels the same regardless of where they are about problems,” he said. “They prefer to chapter at political pressure instead of listening to students.”
