https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/us/trump-rubio-khalil-columbia-student-protests.html

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Trump Administration Seeks to Expel a Green-Card Holder Over Student
Protests

Immigration officers arrested a Columbia University graduate for
helping lead campus protests against Israel's treatment of
Palestinians. President Trump said the case was "the first arrest of
many to come."

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Mahmoud Khalil being interviewed by reporters who hold cameras and
microphones toward him.
Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by immigration officers in New York on
Saturday.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Edward WongCharlie SavageHamed AleazizLuis Ferre-Sadurni

By Edward WongCharlie SavageHamed Aleaziz and Luis Ferre-Sadurni

Reporting from Washington and New York

  * March 10, 2025Updated 6:57 p.m. ET

The Trump administration invoked an obscure legal statute over the
weekend in an attempt to deport a recent Columbia University graduate
-- and lawful permanent resident of the United States -- who helped
lead campus protests against Israel last year, people with knowledge
of the action said on Monday.

Mahmoud Khalil, 30, who graduated in December from Columbia with a
master's degree from its School of International and Public Affairs,
was arrested by immigration officers in New York on Saturday and sent
to a detention center in Louisiana. Mr. Khalil, who has Palestinian
heritage, holds a green card and is married to an American citizen
who is eight months pregnant.

On Monday, a federal judge in Manhattan ordered the government not to
remove Mr. Khalil from the United States while the judge reviewed a
petition challenging the legality of his detention. Mr. Khalil's
lawyers also filed a motion on Monday asking the judge to compel the
federal government to transfer him back to New York.

President Trump said Mr. Khalil's case was "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," Mr. Trump said on social media on Monday.

"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," he
added.

The arrest and attempted expulsion of Mr. Khalil by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has provoked alarm over free-speech
rights and the Trump administration's escalating crackdown on
immigration and on universities that Mr. Trump and his aides argue
are too liberal.

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