Crowds of masked scholar protesters raging towards the conflict in Gaza crammed the Columbia College lawns final spring, whereas counterprotesters and journalists surrounded the tent metropolis that had been erected there.
One man stood out.
He was Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate scholar in his 20s, older than many of the college students round him. Mr. Khalil, a Syrian immigrant of Palestinian descent, shortly emerged as a vocal and measured chief throughout rallies and sit-ins, doing on-camera interviews with the media in a zip-up sweater.
And he was unmasked. Many different worldwide college students wore masks and stored to the background of the protests, for worry of being singled out and shedding their visas.
His spouse fearful. “We’ve talked concerning the masks factor,” Noor Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist from the Midwest, stated in an interview final week. “He at all times tells me, ‘What I’m doing incorrect that I should be overlaying my face for?’”
Mr. Khalil was a negotiator on behalf of Columbia College Apartheid Divest, the primary coalition of protesting scholar teams, and one with its personal spectrum of attitudes towards violence and darkish rhetoric.
His determination to fairly actually be the face of a deeply divisive motion would have big penalties for Mr. Khalil. He was known as out by critics by identify on social media, and on March 8, seven weeks after the inauguration of Donald Trump, federal brokers arrived at his door. He was swiftly taken to a detention heart in Louisiana, the place he’s nonetheless being held for what officers have described, with out offering particulars, as main actions aligned with Hamas, an allegation he has denied.
Mr. Khalil’s family and friends have expressed outrage at his detention and doable deportation. However in addition they say they aren’t shocked by his activism in a motion that he was born into, nor his comparatively calm presence amid a swarm of noise.
As he moved via the world, Mr. Khalil might typically come throughout because the grownup within the room. And to 1 who had recognized him as an workplace mate in an earlier time, his position in entrance of microphones and wielding a bullhorn got here surprising.
“He’s very form of delicate mannered,” stated Andrew Waller, a former colleague who labored with Mr. Khalil in Beirut on the British diplomatic workplace for Syria. “Seeing him in additional of a form of management or spokesperson position, I suppose was a shock.”
Mr. Khalil arrived at Columbia College on the finish of an extended and winding journey. His Palestinian origin story was written and ended earlier than he was born.
His grandparents have been from a village close to Tiberias, a metropolis on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Palestine earlier than it turned a part of the state of Israel. They have been pressured to flee in 1948 in the course of the wars previous Israel’s institution, Mr. Khalil has stated, settling with different members of their massive household in southern Damascus in Syria, in a Palestinian refugee enclave. It was there that Mr. Khalil was born in 1995.
Within the early 2010s, he fled the Syrian battle to Lebanon, the place he arrived alone and broke. He labored in building to make sufficient cash to pursue an training, in accordance with his pal Ahmad Berro, who met Mr. Khalil whereas the 2 have been learning at Lebanese American College. Mr. Khalil graduated in 2018 with a level in laptop science.
Whereas in Lebanon, Mr. Khalil labored with Jusoor, a Syrian American instructional nonprofit. There, in 2016, he met the girl who would develop into his spouse, a U.S. citizen of Syrian descent.
In 2018, he started engaged on packages associated to Syria for the British diplomatic workplace in Beirut. He ultimately oversaw a scholarship program for international college students to review in Britain. His work was knowledgeable by his private experiences of fleeing Syria and his opposition to the federal government there, Mr. Waller, his former colleague, stated.
After about 4 years, Mr. Khalil set his sights on the US and utilized to some graduate colleges. He hoped to be accepted at one specifically, Columbia College and its College of Worldwide and Public Affairs.
He was accepted and enrolled in January 2023.
He noticed it as an enormous win, not just for himself, however for his fellow refugees, stated Lauren Bohn, a journalist who met Mr. Khalil in Beirut and frolicked with him after his admission to Columbia. “He stated, ‘It will actually assist me serve all of the others who aren’t going to have the ability to get this opportunity.’”
He had been on the college for some 9 months when all the things modified on Oct. 7, 2023.
A campus in turmoil
College students at Columbia turned out for protests instantly after Hamas’s assaults on Israel. Some have been quiet requires peace, others extra raucous. Professional-Palestinian and anti-Israel chants rang via the campus, rattling many Jewish college students.
Mr. Khalil was on the entrance traces with Palestinian activists, bracing for a counterattack from Israel that was imminent. In a video from Oct. 12, 5 days after the assaults, he’s seen atop one other particular person’s shoulders, shouting “Free Palestine!” right into a bullhorn.
Months of protests adopted. Then, in April 2024, pro-Palestinian college students established an encampment on the heart of campus. They demanded that the college divest from what they known as “all financial and tutorial stakes in Israel,” together with Columbia’s dual-degree partnership with Tel Aviv College.
The rows of tents pitched on Columbia’s iconic, grassy lawns impressed comparable protests at universities throughout the US. They turned a flashpoint after Columbia’s president known as the New York Metropolis police to campus, resulting in the arrests of greater than 100 folks. Because the protests intensified, some Jewish college students complained about feeling unsafe. Some heard anti-Zionist chants as threatening to them personally. These accounts reached Congress, the place Republicans derided the protests as antisemitic and Columbia as uncontrolled.
When negotiations started between the protesters and the college, Mr. Khalil emerged as a lead spokesman for the scholars. The 2 sides met day and night time. A Columbia administrator who negotiated with him described Mr. Khalil as considerate, passionate and principled, typically to the purpose of rigidity. He bought his again up when he felt he wasn’t being taken severely. Mr. Khalil was additionally a face of the protesters for the information media, the place he was sharply vital of the college, stepping confidently as much as banks of microphones the place reporters from CNN, Spectrum Information NY1, The Related Press and The New York Occasions and elsewhere recorded him confronting the varsity that had introduced him to New York.
“It’s very clear the college doesn’t wish to criticize Israel in any approach,” Mr. Khalil informed a gaggle of journalists gathered close to the encampment final spring.
On one other event, at a dialogue sponsored by the coalition of scholar protesters, he remarked that whether or not Palestinian resistance was peaceable or armed, “Israel and their propaganda at all times discover one thing to assault.” He added, “They — we — have tried armed resistance, which is, once more, reputable beneath worldwide regulation.” However Israel calls it terrorism, he stated.
These feedback have been highlighted as justifying terrorism by pro-Israel activists on a webpage about Mr. Khalil that had been compiled by Canary Mission, a gaggle that claims it fights hatred of Jews on school campuses and that pro-Palestinian protesters say has doxxed them.
Nonetheless, Mr. Khalil repeatedly informed pals, as he had his spouse, that he noticed no cause to put on a masks. What have been they going to do to me? he requested.
As soon as, when the variety of tents rose to greater than 100, together with on a second garden close to the College of Journalism, directors turned to Mr. Khalil. They made him a suggestion: Take away about 20 tents, they stated, and we’ll be sure that the college’s trustees proceed to debate your calls for.
Mr. Khalil countered, agreeing to take away a number of lower than the directors wished, in accordance with one administrator current at these talks, who spoke on situation of anonymity to debate non-public college negotiations.
Inside minutes, 17 tents vanished and the second garden was emptied. This response burnished Mr. Khalil’s repute as a good-faith, if demanding, negotiator.
Different instances, he stood quick. Late within the protests, when the college supplied concessions and the specter of the police arriving to filter out demonstrators was looming, Mr. Khalil pushed again. We don’t need your concessions. The police? Allow them to come.
Then they did.
New protests, new president
After a faction of protesters took over Hamilton Corridor, a campus constructing, on April 30, barricading doorways and trapping custodians inside, scores of law enforcement officials descended on the college. They arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and cleared the corridor.
Mr. Khalil was not accused of being within the corridor. He had been suspended by the college simply earlier than the constructing takeover, accused of refusing to depart the encampment, together with many different pro-Palestinian activists, after which was shortly reinstated. However there have been no extra negotiations, and the protests ended for a time.
Columbia slowly ceased being the worldwide flashpoint for campus unrest. Mr. Khalil centered on ending his programs and on the lookout for work after commencement.
He and Ms. Abdalla married, and he obtained a inexperienced card, giving him everlasting residency in the US.
Final summer time, the couple discovered that they have been having a child. Mr. Khalil was excited, his pals stated, getting their residence prepared even because the couple regarded forward towards transferring after he earned his diploma.
“He did all the things, mainly,” Ms. Abdalla, now eight months pregnant, stated. “He did all of the cooking, he did all of the cleansing. He did the laundry. He wouldn’t let me contact something.”
He completed his coursework for his grasp’s diploma from the College of Worldwide and Public Affairs in December. However he remained conscious of protests nonetheless effervescent up at Columbia and at Barnard School, throughout Broadway.
In January, protesters stormed right into a Columbia classroom, and two Barnard college students have been later expelled that month for his or her roles that day. It was a flashback to the turmoil of the earlier spring. Whereas Mr. Khalil was not current, he was quickly drawn again in.
Days later, President Trump, newly inaugurated, issued an govt order promising to fight antisemitism and prosecute or “take away” perpetrators of such views.
The identical night time, an X account of a Zionist group singled out Mr. Khalil. It accused him, with out proof, of claiming that “Zionists don’t should reside,” and stated that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement company had his residence deal with. “He’s on our deport record,” the publish stated.
It included a video of Mr. Khalil talking in a CNN interview, throughout which he made no such assertion. Mr. Khalil has stated he had “unequivocally” by no means spoken these phrases — one other scholar had, and was expelled.
Mr. Khalil noticed himself and different scholar protesters as victims of doxxing, discovering their private data unfold on social media. On Jan. 31, he emailed Columbia directors asking for cover for worldwide college students, comparable to himself, who he stated have been going through “extreme and pervasive doxxing, discriminatory harassment and really presumably deportation.” A Columbia spokeswoman declined to touch upon communications from Mr. Khalil.
Jasmine Sarryeh, a detailed pal, tried to allay his considerations and informed him he would by no means be deported. Now she looks like she let him down.
“I didn’t assume to count on that this could occur,” she stated in a latest interview.
‘Suspected Overseas Nationwide’
On March 5, in response to the expulsion of the Barnard college students in January, protesters wearing kaffiyehs and sporting masks descended upon the faculty’s library. It was a Wednesday, and Mr. Khalil turned from his child preparations and attended as properly, maskless once more.
It was the start of a four-day stretch that might finish with Mr. Khalil in federal detention.
Movies on social media depict him on the library holding a megaphone — and, at one level, utilizing it to amplify the Barnard president, who’s talking over a cellphone. When the protesters are requested in the event that they wish to converse with the president, Laura Rosenbury, Mr. Khalil provides them an encouraging thumbs up. They reply in unison: “Sure!”
Critics of the protests instantly started posting movies and pictures of Mr. Khalil on X, calling him out by identify.
One publish included a picture of his face circled in purple with the label “Suspected Overseas Nationwide.”
Then, Shai Davidai, an Israeli Jew and Columbia professor banned from campus in October after he was accused of harassing staff, reposted that picture and tagged one other X account. It belonged to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who had simply posted a menace to deport Hamas supporters.
“Illegally taking up a school during which you aren’t even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda ought to be a deportable offense, no?” Mr. Davidai wrote.
Individually, Shirion Collective, a gaggle that claims it exposes antisemitism, has stated that it despatched the Division of Homeland Safety a authorized memorandum advising the “detention and elimination” of Mr. Khalil.
Mr. Khalil noticed a few of the posts on-line and panicked. He was being singled out for deportation on to the very official with the facility to set that course of in movement.
On Friday, March 7, he once more wrote to Columbia directors and described a “vicious, coordinated and dehumanizing doxxing marketing campaign” towards him.
“I haven’t been capable of sleep, fearing that ICE or a harmful particular person may come to my residence,” he wrote.
That worry could be realized the following day.
‘Let’s deliver him in.’
Mr. Khalil and his spouse have been out with pals on Saturday night time, March 8. Once they returned to their Columbia residence, a person in plain garments pushed into the foyer behind them. Ms. Abdalla felt her husband tense.
“He knew one thing was incorrect,” she stated.
I’m with the police, the person stated. It’s a must to include us. Extra officers arrived within the foyer. Ms. Abdalla hurried as much as their residence to get her husband’s inexperienced card. She reminded the officers that he was a everlasting citizen.
“‘This man has a inexperienced card,’” she heard the officer say on his cellphone. “After which the man on the cellphone with him informed him, ‘Let’s deliver him in anyway.’”
In a video recording of the arrest, she is heard asking the officers repeatedly to establish themselves and to specify what fees her husband was going through. She rushes after the officers into the road as they ignore her questions.
It stays unclear what precisely Mr. Khalil is believed to have finished. He’s accused by the White Home and others of organizing protests, such because the one within the Barnard library, the place members distributed fliers selling Hamas. A flier that was proven in on-line postings from the library stated it had been produced by the “Hamas Media Workplace.” It was titled “Our Narrative” and listed Hamas’s code identify for the Oct. 7 assaults, with a picture of fighters standing on a tank. It’s unclear whether or not Mr. Khalil knew the fliers have been there.
“I can wholeheartedly say that I do know that he didn’t contact these fliers,” stated Mr. Khalil’s pal, Maryam Alwan. “However simply because he had his face out, persons are attempting to pin all the things on him.”
His attorneys additionally denied that he had distributed the fliers at Barnard.
Mr. Waller, his former colleague in Lebanon, stated the depictions of Mr. Khalil that he had seen within the information media didn’t line up with the pal he knew.
“The concept he’s one way or the other a political extremist or a sympathizer with terrorist teams or no matter simply sounds completely outlandish,” he stated. “If him and his character, it simply looks like a form of apparent smear.”
There are circumstances during which everlasting residency standing in the US may be revoked — if, for instance, the resident is convicted of a criminal offense. However Mr. Khalil has not been accused of any crime. As an alternative, Secretary Rubio has cited a little-used statute because the rationale for Mr. Khalil’s detention. The regulation says that the federal government can provoke deportation proceedings towards anybody whose presence within the nation is deemed adversarial to the US’ international coverage pursuits.
Mr. Davidai, the professor who tweeted the picture at Secretary Rubio, stated in an interview that he believed Mr. Khalil was entitled to due course of beneath the regulation. However, he added, it doesn’t a lot matter whether or not Mr. Khalil personally dealt with fliers selling terrorists, if the group he represented did.
“If you lead a company, you’re accountable in your group’s actions,” Mr. Davidai stated. “If you lead a company that overtly and proudly helps a U.S. designated terrorist group, you’re accountable to the spreading of propaganda.”
Mr. Khalil has stated he was by no means the planner and chief of the pro-Palestinian protests; he has constantly described himself as a spokesman and negotiator for a coalition of scholar teams.
Resolving this was not the job of the brokers who got here to his foyer that Saturday night time. They handcuffed Mr. Khalil, led him to a automotive ready exterior and drove him away.
Katherine Rosman, Sharon Otterman, Jonah E. Bromwich and Michael LaForgia contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.
