The spouse of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil stated she and her husband have been returning to their condo 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 stated his arrest is the primary of many.
“US immigration ripped my soul from me,” Khalil’s spouse stated in Tuesday evening’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 pupil and inexperienced card holder, was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers from his university-owned condo Saturday evening after he was informed his pupil visa was being revoked, his lawyer, Amy Greer, has stated.
Khalil’s spouse stated Tuesday that they’d returned from an Iftar dinner once they have been adopted and confronted by ICE brokers. Iftar is a meal that breaks fasting throughout Muslims’ Ramadan holy month observations.
She stated brokers informed her to go to the couple’s condo upstairs or face arrest as she continued to remain by her husband’s aspect.
“We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer,” she stated.
Brokers whisked him away in an unmarked car, she stated, 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 stated.
She stated the official did not reply. In a courtroom submitting, Greer, Khalil’s lawyer, stated the supposed 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 have 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,” stated the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, which has additionally demanded his launch.
In a press release Tuesday evening launched via a spokesperson engaged on the case with Khalil’s legal professionals, Khalil’s spouse, who was not named, detailed the arrest and requested supporters to proceed their stress marketing campaign to hasten a potential launch because the couple is anticipating a toddler 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 Photographs)
Cellphone video of a downtown Manhattan protest confirmed some within the crowd clashing with officers on the street. Police stated 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 can embody suggestions on the way it can fight anti-Israel bias, he stated in a message to the UCLA group.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” Frenk stated. “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 accordance 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 indication titled “ICE: Release Mahmoud Khalil NOW!”
Khalil is being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
Greer stated that ICE brokers have been informed that Khalil has a inexperienced card and is a everlasting resident, however that he was arrested anyway.
On Monday, U.S. District Choose Jesse M. Furman quickly blocked Khalil from being deported, saying he’ll stay in the USA because the courtroom weighs challenges to his arrest and deliberate deportation.
A detention listening to is scheduled for Wednesday, however Khalil won’t be current, his authorized workforce stated.
Hundreds gathered in New York Metropolis’s Foley Sq. Monday, to protest the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. (Evan Simko-Bednarski/Center East Photographs/AFP by way of Getty)
A Division of Homeland Safety spokesperson stated his arrest was in coordination with ICE and the State Division in help 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 stated Tuesday that Khalil was arrested beneath a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act that enables 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 stated.
Final spring, Khalil helped arrange protests on the college concerning the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Trump stated on Fact Social that Khalil’s arrest was the primary of many to come back. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated 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 stated 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 stated in a press release Monday evening.
“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 stated Tuesday that legal professionals from its nationwide and New York state places of work are becoming a member of Khalil’s authorized protection workforce after, it argued on social media, “ICE unlawfully arrested and detained him in retaliation for his political views.”
Greer stated that she talked to Khalil and that he was in good spirits and appreciated the help. His spouse, who’s eight months pregnant, pleaded to have him by her aspect 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 stated in a separate assertion launched by Greer.
She referred to as him her “rock” and stated 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 stated.
There have been two arrests and no different critical incidents at Monday’s rally in New York Metropolis, in accordance with the workplace of the police division’s deputy commissioner for public data.
It stated 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 courtroom, and {that a} 33-year-old man was arrested and accused of assault, the small print of which have been unavailable.
