The spouse of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil mentioned she and her husband had been returning to their condominium after breaking their Ramadan quick when immigration brokers confronted them and arrested Khalil in a case that has prompted protests calling for his launch.
Her plea got here as protesters demanded the discharge of the Palestinian activist for a second straight day. President Donald Trump mentioned his arrest is the primary of many.
“US immigration ripped my soul from me,” Khalil’s spouse mentioned in Tuesday night time’s assertion. “Instead of putting together our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of our first child, I am left sitting in our apartment, wondering when Mahmoud will get a chance to call me from a detention center.”
Khalil, a Columbia College graduate scholar and inexperienced card holder, was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers from his university-owned condominium Saturday night time after he was instructed his scholar visa was being revoked, his legal professional, Amy Greer, has mentioned.
Khalil’s spouse mentioned Tuesday that they’d returned from an Iftar dinner after they had been adopted and confronted by ICE brokers. Iftar is a meal that breaks fasting throughout Muslims’ Ramadan holy month observations.
She mentioned brokers instructed her to go to the couple’s condominium upstairs or face arrest as she continued to remain by her husband’s facet.
“We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer,” she mentioned.
Brokers whisked him away in an unmarked car, she mentioned, as she struggled to course of what occurred.
“Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch,” Khalil’s spouse mentioned.
She mentioned the official did not reply. In a court docket submitting, Greer, Khalil’s lawyer, mentioned the meant recipient was Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong.
The varsity didn’t reply to a request for remark Tuesday afternoon.
Protesters amassed outdoors Metropolis Corridor on Tuesday and once more at Washington Sq. Park in New York Metropolis as a number of occasions decrying Khalil’s arrest had been scheduled or have taken place throughout the nation.
“Students and faculty across the country are staging walkouts today to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil,” mentioned the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, which has additionally demanded his launch.
In a press release Tuesday night time launched by a spokesperson engaged on the case with Khalil’s attorneys, Khalil’s spouse, who was not named, detailed the arrest and requested supporters to proceed their strain marketing campaign to hasten a potential launch because the couple is anticipating a baby in April.
Protestors collect to demand the discharge of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Sq. on March 10, 2025 in New York Metropolis (David Dee Delgado/Getty Photos)
Cellphone video of a downtown Manhattan protest confirmed some within the crowd clashing with officers on the street. Police mentioned it was too early to report potential arrests, with a press release anticipated Tuesday night.
At UCLA, college students gathered at Dickson Plaza on campus, the place megaphones and rattling drums punctuated requires Khalil’s launch.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk introduced Monday that the college would launch an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism” that may embrace suggestions on the way it can fight anti-Israel bias, he mentioned in a message to the UCLA neighborhood.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” Frenk mentioned. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively.”
College students at Stanford College in Santa Clara County, California, gathered on campus within the afternoon to protest the arrest, in line with aerial video from NBC Bay Space.
A rally was additionally deliberate at Federal Plaza in Chicago, and on the College of California Berkeley, an outdoor group, the Normal Union of Palestine College students, deliberate an illustration titled “ICE: Release Mahmoud Khalil NOW!”
Khalil is being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
Greer mentioned that ICE brokers had been instructed that Khalil has a inexperienced card and is a everlasting resident, however that he was arrested anyway.
On Monday, U.S. District Decide Jesse M. Furman briefly blocked Khalil from being deported, saying he’ll stay in the USA because the court docket weighs challenges to his arrest and deliberate deportation.
A detention listening to is scheduled for Wednesday, however Khalil won’t be current, his authorized staff mentioned.
Hundreds gathered in New York Metropolis’s Foley Sq. Monday, to protest the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. (Evan Simko-Bednarski/Center East Photos/AFP by way of Getty)
A Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson mentioned his arrest was in coordination with ICE and the State Division in assist of Trump’s “executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism” and since Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Trump and his administration didn’t present proof of the allegations in opposition to Khalil.
The State Division mentioned Tuesday that Khalil was arrested below a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act that permits noncitizens to be deported if the secretary of state determines their “presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” a spokesperson mentioned.
Final spring, Khalil helped arrange protests on the college concerning the warfare in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Trump mentioned on Reality Social that Khalil’s arrest was the primary of many to return. Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned Sunday on X that the administration would revoke the visas and inexperienced playing cards “of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Greer mentioned the feedback by Trump and authorities officers present the illegality of Khalil’s arrest.
“He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent in violation of the First Amendment,” she mentioned in a press release Monday night time.
“While tomorrow or thereafter the government may cite the law or process, that toothpaste is out of the tube and irreversibly so,” Greer added. “The government’s objective is as transparent as it is unlawful, and our role as Mahmoud’s lawyers is to ensure it does not prevail.”
The American Civil Liberties Union mentioned Tuesday that attorneys from its nationwide and New York state workplaces are becoming a member of Khalil’s authorized protection staff after, it argued on social media, “ICE unlawfully arrested and detained him in retaliation for his political views.”
Greer mentioned that she talked to Khalil and that he was in good spirits and appreciated the assist. His spouse, who’s eight months pregnant, pleaded to have him by her facet earlier than their child is born.
“For everyone reading this, I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby,” she mentioned in a separate assertion launched by Greer.
She known as him her “rock” and mentioned everybody who has met him “can attest to his incredible character, humbleness, selflessness, and his love for helping others.”
“I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world,” she mentioned.
There have been two arrests and no different severe incidents at Monday’s rally in New York Metropolis, in line with the workplace of the police division’s deputy commissioner for public info.
It mentioned in a press release {that a} 21-year-old man was arrested and accused of obstructing governmental administration, which basically earned him a ticket ordering him to seem in court docket, and {that a} 33-year-old man was arrested and accused of assault, the main points of which had been unavailable.
