New video shows moment Mahmoud Khalil detained by ICE

Footage has emerged of the moment US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detain and take Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from his home in New York. 

The video, taken by Khalil’s terrified, eight-months-pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, shows plainclothes ICE officers putting handcuffs on him, hostilely saying “you’re going to be under arrest” and ordering him to “stop resisting”, despite his wife pointing out to the agents that he isn’t resisting. 

At no point in the two minute video do the ICE agents present a warrant, inform Khalil or his wife about what he’s being charged with or say why he’s being arrested. 

As the agents put his handcuffs on, Khalil can be heard saying “there’s no need for this”. 

When the agents begin marching Khalil through the building to be taken away, he turns to his wife and says “My love, it will be fine”. With tears clearly building as she watches her husband being taken away, Abdalla replies in Arabic, “My love, how will I call you?”, with him asking her to call his lawyer. 

Later in the video, his wife, on the phone to a lawyer, tries to ask the ICE agents their names, which they refuse to give, telling her to “stay back” and saying “we don’t give names”. They won’t even reveal the agency to which they belong. 

The agents only tell her that Khalil will be taken into “immigration custody” at one of their detention centres, only for them later to learn he was being held in Louisiana.

“You’re watching the most terrifying moment of my life,” Abdalla said to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

“This felt like a kidnapping because it was … Officers in plainclothes — who refused to show us a warrant, speak with our attorney, or even tell us their names — forced my husband into an unmarked car and took him away from me. They threatened to take me too, even though we were calm and fully cooperating. For the next 38 hours after this video, neither I or our lawyers knew where Mahmoud was being held. Now, he’s over 1,000 miles from home, still being wrongfully detained by US immigration.”

Khalil was born to Palestinian refugee parents in Damascus, Syria, in 1995. His family later fled Syria for Lebanon after the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, immigrating to the US in 2022 to attend Columbia University.

The Palestinian holds permanent residency in the US, popularly known as a green card, and was arrested and prepared for deportation on Saturday in an unprecedented move by the Trump administration to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters. 

Green cards usually provide protection for immigrants to the US, with the status only being stripped if a crime has been committed. Khalil is not accused of any crime, but rather has been targeted due to his leading role in legal pro-Palestine activism during protests at Columbia University against Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. 

The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil using an obscure Cold War-era provision whereby the Secretary of State, currently Marco Rubio, can deport any green card holder if their presence in the US  “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”. 

Judges in the US have temporarily suspended Khalil’s deportation from the US, with a host of civil rights groups arguing his case, but the Trump administration has shown no sign of backing down. If Khalil is deported under the precedented set by Trump State Department, it could lead to many more people being arrested simply for supporting Palestine, something Trump has recently promised. 

“Mr. Khalil was taken by plainclothes DHS agents in front of his pregnant wife without any legal justification,” one of his lawyers Samah Sisay of the CCR said.

“Mr. Khalil must be freed because the government cannot use these coercive tactics to unlawfully suppress his First Amendment protected speech in support of Palestinian rights,” she added.