How Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil became a Trump administration symbol of campus protests

Days after a tent demonstration in support of Gaza had been cleared, Jewish students at Columbia University gathered on Passover to share their reasons for participating in the campus protests. Joining them was Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student who had been tapped to liaison with the school administration.

Khalil is currently being held in an immigration detention facility by the Trump administration. But a year ago, he skipped out on the first encampment at Columbia, which would launch a wave of antiwar protests across the country — fearing the risk to his student visa.

“That’s why I’m not suspended, by the way,” Khalil said at the April 23 event. “Because I did not participate, fearing that I will be arrested and ultimately deported from this country. This is why a lot of the Palestinian students here, they feel very uncomfortable — very, very uncomfortable — participating.”

Khalil, who has since completed his international studies courses and is now a legal permanent resident with a green card, has not been charged with any crime. His arrest has sparked protests and criticism over its implications for free speech. As he made his first appearance Friday, Columbia agreed to several of the Trump administration’s demands to start negotiations for $400 million in federal funding that had been revoked over allegations of antisemitism.

Attorneys for the federal government say they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that his presence in the United States could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” according to court filings. Speaking with reporters, Trump administration officials have attempted to link Khalil to some of the most controversial protest activity on and around Columbia’s campus.

Interviews with friends and family, court documents, and reporting from last spring tell a more complicated story about the role Khalil may have played in the demonstrations.

Khalil would not join an independent group of activists who forcefully occupied a campus building, Hamilton Hall, which brought the protests to a grinding halt after Columbia administrators called the cops and campus effectively shuttered in the final days of the spring semester.

But he was well-known for his involvement in the broader demonstrations. As students increasingly concealed their identities, Khalil, some years older than the undergraduates, did not wear a mask. He was quoted in the press. He met with administrators, laid out the terms for activists to take down their tents, and returned with updates to the encampment. He had a suspension reversed after one day over his cooperation with the university.

“I think the reason that he was chosen for that role was because of his personality and because of the way he is,” his wife, Noor Abdalla, an American citizen, told public radio. “He’s calm. He knows how to stay calm in stressful situations, and everybody knew him as the guy who was not going to start yelling or anything like that.”

Khalil himself seemed to anticipate such immigration enforcement was possible while he was still on a student visa. At the Jewish students’ event in April, a reporter asked Khalil what would happen to him if he were deported. He sighed, taking a moment to collect his thoughts.

“I will live,” he replied. “We would continue to live. The Palestinian people have been under occupation, ethnic cleansing, and all sorts of crimes since 1948. And we prevailed, we will prevail.”

In letters of support filed in court, friends recounted a time Khalil intervened when a protester shouted antisemitic remarks. Faculty described him as a “stand-out” teacher’s assistant, while a U.S. government official who took a post in Israel spoke highly of their friendship. Recently, Khalil helped convene a panel featuring a prominent Palestinian historian and a former Israeli peace negotiator, another letter said.

When Khalil was asked if he supported Hamas, a U.S-designed terrorist organization — a question letters suggested was posed frequently — three friends said he condemned extremism in all forms and was committed to nonviolence.

Khalil served as the intermediary with administrators on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an unsanctioned student group that has grown more radical over the past year. Last spring, the coalition distanced itself from one of its members who posted his belief that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” online. But in recent months, its leaders rescinded an apology and clarified its stance: Columbia University Apartheid Divest backed “armed resistance” and Palestinian liberation “by any means necessary,” the group wrote in a statement in October.

Without evidence, a far-right, pro-Israel extremist group tied Khalil to the violent remark and asked the federal government to intervene. The organization, Betar USA, has been compiling a list of international students to deport, claiming to share their names on social media and with the Trump administration.

“Mohammad khalil says Zionists don’t deserve to live while he’s on a visa ⁦@Columbia⁩,” Betar wrote on X in late January. “It’s 10 pm and ⁦@ICEgov⁩ is aware of his home address and whereabouts. We have provided all his information to multiple contacts. He’s on our deport list!”

Khalil, who has finished his degree program and is expected to graduate in May, participated in a brief takeover of the library at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate, during which activists distributed materials purporting to be from the Hamas media office, according to videos shared by the protesters, which included far-left activists from the non-Columbia group Unity of Fields. The Trump administration accused Khalil of personally handing out the pamphlets.

“This is an individual who organized group 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, flyers with the logo of Hamas,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at last week’s briefing.

“I have those flyers on my desk, they were provided to me by the Department of Homeland Security,” she added. “This administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.”

Lawyers for Khalil have denied he distributed leaflets from Hamas, adding that no flyers have been introduced so far in federal court.

“The reality is that Mr. Khalil completely and vehemently denies doing anything like that, distributing any flyers like that,” said Ramzi Kassem, an attorney for Khalil and the founder of CLEAR, a legal clinic at CUNY. “He has absolutely no connections to Hamas whatsoever.”

Whether Khalil should be held accountable in immigration proceedings or otherwise for the actions of Columbia University Apartheid Divest or activists who have seized on the campus protests has elicited varying responses.

“You’re seeing a lot of people pointing to the worst thing they’ve heard of the movement or someone else, and saying he’s responsible for it,” said Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia. “Mahmoud has the courage to put his face and name out there. This has made him an easy target for people who don’t care about who he is.”

Howley included the White House in that bucket, suggesting top federal officials “seem to spend way too much time on social media,” and the accounting of events that they read there.

“Mahmoud’s own commitments are a matter of public record. I wouldn’t want someone holding me responsible for someone who stood next to me once. I would like to be held responsible for the things that I have said.”

One Columbia student on social media shared videos of the library takeover and other protests where Khalil was involved, suggesting they were evidence of his responsibility for the protests that some Jewish students have said makes them feel unsafe.

“Mahmoud Khalil is not the hero some make him out to be,” he wrote on X.

Khalil’s attorneys are due back in court on Tuesday over a separate legal matter, where he and his classmates are pushing a Manhattan federal judge to intervene in the federal government’s request for student disciplinary records.

Originally Published: March 23, 2025 at 7:45 AM EDT