Jewish groups targeted Columbia grad Mahmoud Khalil — then ICE arrested him

By Arno Rosenfeld
March 10, 2025

Among the dozens of masked protesters at Barnard College’s library last week, Mahmoud Khalil stood out because his face was bare. In video clips from the demonstration posted online, Khalil is seen testing a megaphone and speaking to a reporter.

Khalil, who received a master’s degree in December from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, is also a foreign national, making him a perfect target for pro-Israel activists who have been calling on the Trump administration to deport students involved in protesting the war in Gaza.

Such pro-Israel forces started circulating photos and video of Khalil shortly after the Barnard library protest concluded last Wednesday. Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus, a group focused on Columbia, described him on X as one of the “leading agitators on campus” and asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “#DeportMahmoudKhalil.”

David Lederer, a junior at Columbia, shared photos of a pamphlet labeled as coming from the “Hamas Media Office” and suggested it was distributed at the protest. Lederer said Khalil was “known to have been on a foreign visa last year.”

It turned out that Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen, has a green card. But that did not stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting him on Saturday at his university-owned apartment, and taking him to an immigration detention facility 1,300 miles away in Louisiana.

Amy Greer, Khalil’s lawyer, told reporters that the agents who arrested him said they were operating on orders from the State Department to revoke Khalil’s student visa and were surprised to learn that he was in fact a permanent U.S. resident.

Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist who previously shared a list of campus protesters with federal immigration authorities, said that he was in Washington, D.C., for meetings with members of Congress during the Barnard library demonstration and discussed Khalil with aides to Sens. Ted Cruz and John Fetterman who promised to “escalate” the issue. He said that some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.

“This unfolded very quickly because it was obvious,” Glick said in an interview Monday.“Everybody was upset,” he recalled of his meetings on the Hill. “The guy was making it too easy for us.”

Spokespeople for Cruz and Fetterman did not immediately respond to inquiries about the case. The Department of Homeland Security, the agency that detained Khalil, referred questions about his arrest to the White House, which taunted Khalil in a social media post Monday reading: “Shalom Mahmoud.”

First salvo in new campaign

The concept of deporting international students who participated in protests against Israel grew in popularity during last year’s presidential campaign. The movement has intensified since President Donald Trump took office in January with a promise to ramp up immigration enforcement.

Advocates argue that the protests themselves are antisemitic and the protesters support Hamas, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.

Glick, the activist who discussed the Khalil case with Senate staffers, was until recently connected to a far-right Jewish group called Betar, which began compiling a list last fall of international students involved in the protests, and shared the database with the Trump administration.

Axios reported last week that the State Department was planning to scan the social media accounts of thousands of foreigners and revoke the visas of those it believes are “pro-Hamas.”

Khalil appears to have been the first person targeted on this basis, with a DHS spokesperson saying in a statement that he had “led activities aligned to Hamas.” A labor union at Columbia said Monday that a second student was also visited by ICE agents on Saturday, but that their attempts to arrest her were unsuccessful.

“There will be more names coming,” Glick said.

Columbia in crosshairs

Columbia, an elite bastion of liberalism in New York City, became a symbol of the encampment movement that gripped American campuses last spring, the site of two confrontations between protesters and police as well as the takeover of a university building. It has also been a special target for Republicans, who held a news conference at the Manhattan campus last spring accusing administrators of failing to protect Jewish students.

Minouche Shafik resigned as Columbia’s president over the summer after she was grilled by GOP members of Congress in April about her handling of the protests, and the Trump administration announced Friday that they were pulling $400 million in federal funds from the school.

Some Jewish alumni have also expressed outrage toward the school over what they describe as a hostile climate for Jewish students who did not disavow Zionism. A “donor revolt” has occurred among some wealthy Jews, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who suspended his support for Columbia last year, and Avi Kaner, a grocery store magnate who recently switched his giving to focus on Jewish programming at the school.

“None of this would have happened if the university’s administration did its one job: enable students to go to class,” said Ari Shrage, a founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, which defended the government’s move to arrest Khalil.

Victor Muslin, a Columbia graduate who helps run several groups focused on fighting antisemitism, compared student protesters to cockroaches in WhatsApp messages that leaked in February and March. “Ignoring roaches in one’s house is possible but who wants to live that way?” he said in one message obtained by the Columbia Spectator.

Other participants in the WhatsApp group, which is called Columbia Alumni for Israel, asked members to report demonstrators to ICE. And Aryeh, a pro-Israel club at Columbia, recently posted openings for “archival fellows” to work anonymously with Documenting Jew Hatred, the group that called on X for Khalil to be deported.

“I think it was completely justified,” Shoshana Afuzian, a freshman at Barnard and vocal supporter of Israel, said in an interview. “If a non-citizen acts against American interests, the government reserves the right to rescind their green card.”

But even some pro-Israel students at the school are now worried that these efforts have gone too far. Eliana Goldin, a Columbia senior, said on social media Monday that she expected Khalil’s arrest would prompt a new protest encampment and posed broader concerns related to civil liberties.

“If Trump can deport anti-Zionists, he can deport Zionists too,” she wrote.

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