‘Contrary to national and foreign policy interests’: US moves to deport Palestinian Columbia student

NEW YORK - A Palestinian student activist at New York’s Columbia University, detained as part of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on some anti-Israel protesters, has been moved to a federal jail for migrants in Louisiana to await deportation proceedings, according to a US detainee database.

The transfer to Louisiana came as lawyers for Mr Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, began their legal challenge to his arrest in his Columbia apartment building in the US district court in Manhattan.

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Mr Trump wrote in a social media post on March 10, as Mr Khalil’s supporters began protesting in Manhattan against what they say is an attack on freedom of speech.

The Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and subsequent US-supported Israeli assault on Gaza have led to months of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests that have roiled college campuses in the US and overseas. Khalil has been a prominent figure in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian student protest movement.

The Trump administration has not said Khalil is accused of or charged with a crime, but Mr Trump wrote that his presence in the US was “contrary to national and foreign policy interests”.

Even before Mr Khalil’s arrest, students say federal immigration agents have been spotted at student housing around Columbia’s Manhattan campus since March 6, a day before the Trump administration announced it was cancelling US$400 million (S$533.4 million) in federal grants and contracts awarded to the school.

The federal agents have been trying to detain at least one other international student besides Mr Khalil, according to the Student Workers of Columbia labour union.

That student, whom the union declined to identify, received an e-mail on March 6 from the US consulate in their home country telling them their visa had been revoked, which has not previously been reported. The consulate gave no reason for the revocation, the union said.

The next day, three agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), entered the student’s building and tried to get into their apartment. The agents did not have a judicial warrant and so cannot enter private property without permission, the union said.

“The agents were rightfully turned away at the door,” the union said in a statement.

Spokespeople for DHS and ICE declined to answer questions about the union’s account, which Reuters was unable to independently verify, and their recent activities at Columbia.

A spokesperson for the US Department of State said visa records are confidential under US law, and so the department could not comment.

The union said the student asked not to be publicly identified to protect their privacy and for fear of harming their continued studies at Columbia. A spokesperson for Columbia said the university was barred by law from discussing individual students with the media.

‘Chilling effect’

On the evening of March 8, agents from the DHS arrested Mr Khalil in front of his wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant, in their building’s lobby, telling him his student visa had been revoked, according to Ms Amy Greer, a lawyer for Mr Khalil.

Mr Khalil has held a US permanent residency green card since 2024, Ms Greer said in a statement. His wife showed the agents Mr Khalil’s green card, and they also threatened to arrest her if she did not leave her lobby, Ms Greer said.

They then said the green card was also revoked, declining to give a reason, and handcuffed Khalil, Ms Greer said.

Hours before his arrest, Mr Khalil told Reuters he was concerned that the government was targeting him for his high-profile comments about what he calls an anti-war movement to the media.

Mr Trump, a Republican, has singled out Columbia’s handling of the protests for criticism since returning to the White House, saying the university has allowed anti-Semitic harassment “on and near” its campus.

The President wrote in a March 10 post that some Columbia students had engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” that he would not tolerate.

Mr Khalil and other activists note that Jewish students are among the protest organisers, and say their criticism of Israel and its US government support is being wrongly conflated with anti-Ssemitism.

In the wrongful detention challenge filed in the Manhattan federal court on March 9, known as a petition for writ of habeas corpus, Ms Greer asked that a judge order Mr Khalil be released and that DHS be barred from transporting him outside New York.

Ms Greer wrote that federal agents told Mr Khalil that they were arresting him because his student visa was revoked, making it possible that he was being held by mistake since he is a lawful permanent resident.

She said Mr Khalil’s detention was motivated by his “criticism of US institutions that support Israel”, which she said was free speech protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

“Even the threat of detention and deportation has a chilling effect on speech,” Ms Greer wrote. The government has not yet responded to the petition. REUTERS