Trump calls arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil ‘first of many to come’

Donald Trump said on Monday that the arrest of a prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year, is the “first arrest of many to come”.

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” the US president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

He added: “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”

Trump’s remarks come as over the weekend federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card who is a recent Columbia graduate, and took him into custody, reportedly acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.

In his statement on Monday, Trump said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) took Khalil into custody after his executive order and claimed, without evidence, that similar activists on college campuses are paid agitators, not students.

Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University last year, mediating between protesters and university administrators.

Khalil’s attorney said this weekend that the arrest took place on Saturday night, when Khalil was in his university-owned apartment building, just a few blocks from Columbia’s main campus in New York. Several Ice agents entered the building and took him into custody.

At first, it was reported that Khalil was taken to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but his wife said she could not locate him there.

As of Monday morning, it appeared that he was now listed as being in Ice custody at La Salle detention facility in Louisiana.

Free speech organizations, first amendment advocates and some New York City leaders expressed outrage in response to the unprecedented arrest and ongoing detainment of Khalil, calling it unconstitutional, “an egregious violation of the first amendment” and a “frightening weaponization of immigration law”.