Trump Confirms ICE Arrested Palestinian Columbia Graduate Over Political Speech

President Donald Trump confirmed Monday that .

“It’s not a criminalized activity to speak out against genocide. In fact, it’s antiracist, it’s for justice and it’s for the wellbeing of everyone across the world, including this country,” Layan Fuleihan, education director for the People’s Forum, told HuffPost at a peaceful New York City protest for Khalil’s release. “I would say this is something we’re not intimidated by, we’re going to be fighting for Mahmoud’s release and for anyone who is targeted in this outrageous witch hunt coming from the U.S. administration.”

Immigration experts say DHS can start deportation proceedings against green card holders for alleged criminal activity, but the legal basis for detaining a legal permanent resident without criminal charges is shaky.

While DHS accused Khalil of engaging in “activities aligned to Hamas,” the agency gave no evidence of him providing material support to the militant group.

Greer said she was initially told that Khalil was transferred to an ICE detention center in New Jersey. Upon visiting the facility, his wife was told he was not there. According to the ICE detainee tracker, Khalil has been transferred to the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin did not respond to HuffPost to say why agents did not inform Khalil’s wife of his location, nor why agents ignored Khalil’s constitutional rights by taking him, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., without a warrant.

Columbia and the federal government soon faced intense backlash over Khalil’s arrest, with faculty, advocacy groups, lawyers and students all demanding ICE release him and end Trump’s ongoing free speech crackdown disguised as fighting antisemitism.

“My committed Jewish faculty colleagues and I have warned that the false characterization of Columbia as a hotbed of antisemitism would be used as an alibi for what’s actually at stake, for the Republican establishment and now the Trump administration,” Marianne Hirsch, a professor emerita at Columbia, said on Monday. “Strict control of speech, protest and higher education at large.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim American advocacy group, said it will join other civil rights organizations in helping fight Khalil’s detention, which is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s ongoing crackdown on free speech that he’s portrayed as fighting antisemitism.

“It is utterly despicable that they are carrying out this authoritarian lurch under the guise of fighting for Jewish safety. Let’s be perfectly clear: not only does destroying higher education and abducting students for political speech not keep Jews safe, it actively endangers us,” said Eva Borgwardt, spokesperson for progressive Jewish American group IfNotNow, on Monday.

“If we do not all strongly oppose this dystopian crackdown on freedom of expression, directed by a government with many neo-Nazi ties and members, any of Trump’s political opponents could be its next victims,” she continued. “Advocates for reproductive justice, climate action, trans rights, immigrant rights and other progressive causes.”

Matt Shuham contributed to reporting.