President Trump is giving this anti-Israel campus rabble-rouser a ticket to study abroad — for good.
A Palestinian activist who led the disruptive protests at both Columbia University and Barnard College has been arrested by ICE agents at his campus apartment, according to his lawyer.
Mahmoud Khalil, who completed his graduate studies at Ivy League Columbia in December, also potentially faces having his visa revoked and his green card canceled following President Trump’s crackdown on unrest at colleges, attorney Amy Greer said Sunday.
He was inside his university-owned apartment a few blocks from campus Saturday night when ICE agents entered the residence and took him into custody, Greer said.
Despite graduating months ago, Khalil still lived in school-provided housing due to a policy allowing students to remain on campus after graduating, a source told The Post.
Activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested Sunday, his attorney Amy Greer told AP. LP Media
He has remained active in recent disruptive protests, including last week’s takeover of the Milstein Library at Barnard College. Videos and photographs posted on X depict him holding a bullhorn near the library entrance and engaged in discussion with school administrators.
That protest featured violent propaganda flyers that purportedly came directly from the “Hamas Media Office,” including one pamphlet titled “Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood that justified the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people — in which women were repeatedly raped, whole families were executed and 251 hostages were taken to the Gaza Strip.
Others at the Barnard library takeover passed around trading card-like photos of notorious Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last September.
Ari Shrage, head of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, told The Post he was dismayed and concerned to see the literature that was being distributed.
“These protesters were handing out materials from terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. Every American citizen should be concerned when students are encouraging terrorist activities on US soil regardless of their nationality.”
Barnard College was recently the site of campus building takeovers for two consecutive weeks to protest the expulsion of a pair of students who barged into a Columbia class on modern Israel in January and tossed around pro-Hamas flyers.
One of the documents depicted an Israeli flag in flames and another showed an army boot stomping a Star of David.
In response to the administrators kicking the perpetrators off campus, dozens of masked protesters stormed Barnard’s historic Milbank Hall, the oldest building on campus, on Feb. 26, egged on by pro-Intifada group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine.
Trump announced plans to yank about $400 million in funding from Columbia due to its noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.
A school security guard was assaulted as the violent mob forced its way inside, where protesters graffitied political messages ilke “free Palestine” and “Barnard expels students.”
A week later on March 5, around 200 demonstrators seized the academic nerve center of the elite private women’s college, Milstein Library, where they hung an Old West-style “Wanted” poster featuring Dean of Students Leslie Grinage and a shoddy effigy of Barnard President Laura Rosenbury.
The NYPD evacuated the building after a bogus bomb threat and arrested nine students from nearby schools — many of them privileged youths — who refused lawful orders to disperse.
As agents raided Khalil’s apartment, Columbia put out a statement addressing the presence of agents in the vicinity of the campus, and stated its intention not to cooperate with ICE’s lawful actions except where required by law.
“Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public university areas, including university buildings,” the statement read in part.
“Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community.”
Here is the latest on the Barnard College and Columbia University student protests
Soon after his detention, Khalil’s supporters issued a press release calling the arrest “a racist targeting” which “serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others.”A petition demanding Khalil’s immediate release posted on Action Network garnered more than 273,000 signatures by Sunday evening.
Last September, Khalil and his group, Columbia United Apartheid Divest (CUAD), were among those taking part in the Columbia campus takeover at the start of the school year. Local and state leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul condemned the protests, calling on school officials to enforce disciplinary codes and impose “swift actions” to punish wrongdoers, a source told The Post at the time.
Khalil told a Post reporter during September’s raucous protests that anti-Israel student organizers were undeterred, and promised to ramp up their actions, including establishing future encampments.
Members of the New York Police Department surround a pro-Palestinian encampment on the lawn of Columbia University as they stormed the campus to clear out anti-Israel protestors on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York, N.Y. New York Post
“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Khalil said.
“Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”
Last April, during the height of the encampment protests, Khalil told the Columbia Daily Spectator that he was not personally participating in the protests over concerns he would lose his student visa — which allowed him to remain in the US.
He was briefly suspended that month for taking part in the encampment protest at Columbia, but the suspension was reversed the very next day, he told BBC at the time.
“[They said] that after reviewing the evidence, they don’t have any evidence to suspend,” he said.
Khymani James, 20, a spokesperson for Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which demands the university unwind its investments from any company that does business with the Israeli military — including a large swath of the Fortune 500 — was banned from campus amid the April protests after a video surfaced of them expressing violent and hateful rhetoric towards Jews.
“The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” said James, who uses they/them pronouns.
James later offered a tepid apology, but laid the blame at the foot of “right-wing agitators,” claiming they were targeted for being “visibly queer and black.”
Last spring’s encampment continued to expand until April 18, when Columbia president Minouche Shafik finally called on the NYPD to enter the campus and break it up after protesters ignored warnings to leave.
Cops arrested 108 participants at Columbia, which sparked a movement of solidarity protests of similar encampments at university campuses across the country.
An ICE agent reportedly told Khalil’s lawyer Greer the agency was enforcing a State Department edict to revoke Khalil’s student visa as well as his green card, pursuant to President Trump’s recent pledge to deport foreign student “agitators” responsible for fomenting campus unrest.
The news comes just days after Trump announced plans to yank about $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia due to its noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.