Anti-Israel Agitator Mahmoud Khalil Says His Appeal Process Is Moving Too Fast Tim O’Brian
You haven’t heard much from anti-Israel campus agitator Mahmoud Khalil lately, and there may be a reason for that. He wants to stay in the U.S., and this time around a tad less visibility helps him. Not that he’s become a wallflower. He’s just more selective in where he shows up right now.
Given all that happens and is forgotten from one news cycle to the next, here’s a little refresher on the ungrateful non-American who made his name last year preaching hate on the campus of Columbia University.
On March 8 of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil at his New York City apartment, and then took him to a detention center in Louisiana as part of the formal deportation process.
Kahlil is not an American citizen. He was born in the mid-1990s at a refugee camp in Syria. His parents are described as Palestinian and Algerian, so he has citizenship in Algeria. Before coming to America, he had earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, and then applied for admission into Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In December of 2024, he received his master of public administration degree.
According to all reports, he is a green-card holder and thus a legal resident of the United States who also happens to be married to a U.S. citizen. So far, he’s been careful to check all of the boxes, right?
In the spring of 2024, a few months before he graduated from Columbia, those inorganic “pro-Palestine protests” started to erupt almost simultaneously on campuses across the country.
Columbia became the site of some of the most contentious activity, and Kahlil was at the heart of it all. In April of that year, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” set itself up on the East Butler Lawn and refused to budge. On April 29, an intimidating group of students, and possibly some non-students, occupied Hamilton Hall on campus. They stayed there for 24 hours until New York City police cleared them out.
There were further actions in the fall but not as large or as disorderly as those in the spring. A group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the organizer of the campus disruptions, designated Kahlil as its spokesperson and chief negotiator. Or did he elect himself? It’s unclear.
He was, in effect, the ringleader. As is often the case with people like this, you wouldn’t find him risking his safety or anything else by joining the group in its “direct actions,” like taking over Hamilton Hall. I think Barack Obama called this “leading from behind.”
Kahlil was the one who served as the negotiator between the mob and the school’s administration. Since the situation received an extensive amount of global media coverage, Kahlil become the face of the student anti-Israel movement.
What type of negotiator was he? His critics described him as ginning up the mob to the extent it intimidated and terrorized Jewish students, in particular. Some have used words like “antisemite” to describe him.
Needless to say, he caught the attention of the incoming Trump administration, and so by March 8 he was arrested and held in detention for 104 days before a judge ordered he be released pending his legal proceedings.
Kahlil says he was just exercising his free speech rights, but the Trump administration, through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has said the Kahlil situation is about much more than speech. It’s about terrorizing Jewish students, putting their safety at risk, and national security. Rubio has said repeatedly that as a green-card holder, Kahlil is not entitled to remain in a country if he poses a danger or a threat to actual American citizens.
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