Trump Confirms ICE Arrested Palestinian Columbia Graduate Over Political Speech

"This is the first arrest of many to come," the president said of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder abducted by immigration agents and sent to Louisiana.

President Donald Trump confirmed Monday that federal immigration agents arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate who was taken this weekend — despite being a permanent legal resident of the United States — for helping peacefully lead antiwar protests on campus last year.

Despite not having a warrant, plainclothes agents abducted Khalil Saturday night as he returned to his university-owned apartment with his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. Agents claimed they were revoking Syrian-born Khalil’s green card and also threatened to detain his wife, according to his attorney.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Khalil’s arrest before Trump announced it himself Monday afternoon, with the president labeling the Palestinian man a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” without providing any evidence to support that claim. The arrest was first reported by Zeteo.

“This 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,” Trump posted on Truth Social, again claiming without evidence that antiwar activists on college campuses are “paid agitators” and not students.

Khalil, who received his master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, was a prominent figure in last spring’s protests on college campuses nationwide. Students and faculty of all faiths nonviolently called on the U.S. to stop supporting Israel’s deadly military offensive in Gaza and for their universities to divest from companies that work with the Israeli military and government.