Now he has become the first target of President Donald Trump's drive to punish antisemitic and “anti-American” campus protests. In the first publicly known arrest of the crackdown, federal immigration agents took Khalil, a legal U.S. resident married to an American citizen, from his apartment Saturday and held him for potential deportation.
On Monday a federal judge halted plans for an immediate deportation to allow for a hearing today in New York by those who believe the Syrian native should be allowed to stay.
To Trump and his administration, Khalil's arrest is an opening move in a campaign to rid the country of foreign students accused of helping to make American campuses intimidating territory for Jewish students. To civil rights advocates and Khalil's lawyers, his detention is an assault on free speech and an attempt to suppress pro-Palestinian views.
Khalil is now being held in a federal detention complex in Louisiana.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Khalil should be deported because he organized “protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda.” The U.S. government has designated Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, as a terrorist organization.
A Columbia task force on antisemitism found “serious and pervasive” problems with the climate on campus. The group said in a report that during the demonstrations, Jews and Israelis had been verbally abused, humiliated in classes and ostracized from student groups.
