# ICE detains Mahmoud Khalil after Columbia protests, lawyer says
*Event date: 2025-03-09*
US immigration officials have detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria who played a prominent role in Columbia University's pro-Palestinian protests, according to his lawyer.
Amy Greer told the BBC that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Khalil into custody on Saturday while he was inside his university-owned home in New York. Greer said the officers told him his student visa had been revoked. She said he is in fact a legal permanent resident with a green card and is married to an American citizen.
The arrest immediately became part of a broader political fight over campus protests, immigration enforcement and the Trump administration's handling of people it describes as Hamas supporters. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later posted on X that visas and green cards of Hamas supporters in America would be revoked so they could be deported. The BBC report said Columbia was the centre of pro-Palestinian student protests across the US last year, during which students erected a large encampment and some occupied an academic building for several hours.
Khalil served as lead student negotiator during the Columbia protests, according to the BBC. He was not among the group that seized the academic building, but he did tell the BBC earlier that he had been temporarily suspended by the university, where he was a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Greer said Khalil's wife, who is eight months pregnant and a US citizen, was threatened with arrest by ICE agents. She also said that after being told he had been transferred to a detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she later found that he was not there and did not know his current location. An ICE detainee locator search indicated a Syrian-born individual named Mahmoud Khalil was being held at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, according to the report.
The detention took place just weeks after Trump signed an executive order warning that people involved in what he called "pro-jihadist protests" and "all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses" would be deported. The case has now become a test of how far the administration will go in turning that language into enforcement.
The BBC report also noted the political and institutional pressure surrounding Columbia. The Trump administration had announced $400m in federal grant cuts to the university, saying it had failed to deal with antisemitism on campus. Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong later said the loss of funds would immediately affect research and other functions.
There are still unresolved questions in the case, including Khalil's exact legal status as described by immigration officials and his lawyer, his current location and whether the government will attempt to move ahead with deportation proceedings. But the arrest itself is already significant: a campus protest leader has been detained by federal authorities in a case that blends immigration law, university politics and the administration's broader crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism.
