President Trump is giving this anti-Israel campus rabble-rouser a ticket to study abroad — for good.
A Palestinian activist who led a coalition of twisted radicals seeking the “total eradication of Western civilization” responsible for riotous protests at Columbia University and Barnard College has been arrested by ICE agents, according to his lawyer.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who completed his graduate studies at Columbia in December, also potentially faces having his visa revoked and his green card canceled following Trump’s crackdown on unrest at colleges, attorney Amy Greer said Sunday.
He was inside his university-owned apartment a few blocks from the Ivy League campus Saturday night when ICE agents entered and took him into custody, Greer said.
Despite graduating months ago, Khalil, who earned his undergraduate degree in Beirut, still lived in school-provided housing due to a policy allowing students to remain on campus after graduating, a source told The Post.
Activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested Sunday, his attorney Amy Greer told AP. LP Media
He has remained active in recent disruptive protests, including last week’s takeover of the Milstein Library at Barnard College. Videos and photographs posted on X depict him holding a bullhorn near the library entrance and engaged in discussion with school administrators.
That protest featured violent propaganda flyers that purportedly came directly from the “Hamas Media Office,” including one pamphlet titled “Our Narrative … Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” which justified the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people — and in which women were repeatedly raped, whole families executed and 251 hostages taken to the Gaza Strip.
Others at the Barnard library takeover passed around trading card-like photos of notorious Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last September.
Ari Shrage, head of Columbia’s Jewish Alumni Association, told The Post he was dismayed and concerned to see the literature that was being distributed.
“These protesters were handing out materials from terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. Every American citizen should be concerned when students are encouraging terrorist activities on US soil regardless of their nationality.”
In recent weeks, Barnard College was the site of campus building takeovers for two consecutive weeks to protest the expulsion of a pair of students who barged into a Columbia class on modern Israel in January and tossed around pro-Hamas flyers.
One of the documents depicted an Israeli flag in flames and another showed an army boot stomping a Star of David.
In response to the administrators kicking the perpetrators off campus, dozens of masked protesters stormed Barnard’s historic Milbank Hall, the oldest building on campus, on Feb. 26, egged on by pro-intifada group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine.
Trump announced plans to yank about $400 million in funding from Columbia due to its noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.
A school security guard was assaulted as the violent mob forced its way inside, where protesters graffitied political messages ilke “Free Palestine” and “Barnard expels students.”
A week later on March 5, around 200 demonstrators seized the academic nerve center of the elite private women’s college, Milstein Library, where they hung an Old West-style “Wanted” poster featuring dean of students Leslie Grinage and a shoddy effigy of Barnard president Laura Rosenbury.
The NYPD evacuated the building after a bogus bomb threat and arrested nine students from nearby schools — many of them privileged youths — who refused lawful orders to disperse.
As agents raided Khalil’s apartment, Columbia put out a statement addressing the presence of agents in the vicinity of the campus, and stated its intention not to cooperate with ICE’s actions except where required by law.
“Consistent with our longstanding practice and the practice of cities and institutions throughout the country, law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public university areas, including university buildings,” the statement read in part.
“Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community.”
Here is the latest on the Barnard College and Columbia University student protests
ICE arrests Palestinian leader of Columbia’s anti-Israel protests, revoking student visa and green card: lawyer
Trump administration yanks $400M in grants, contracts from Columbia University over campus antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters arrested at Barnard were mostly privileged youths, including woman whose family started Hamptons Jitney
Anti-Israel students arrested at Barnard were from nearby schools, including Columbia: source
Anti-Israel mob that stormed Barnard handed out ‘Hamas Media Office’ flyers glorifying Oct. 7: ‘Still think they don’t support terror?’
Barnard College, the New School and Columbia graded poorly over combating antisemitism: Anti-Defamation League
Soon after his detention, Khalil’s supporters issued a press release calling the arrest “a racist targeting” which “serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others.”
A petition demanding Khalil’s immediate release posted on Action Network garnered more than 349,000 signatures by Sunday evening.
Last September, Khalil and Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which has vowed to escalate its tactics “until the empire crumbles,” were among those taking part in the campus takeover at the start of the school year.
Members of the New York Police Department surround a pro-Palestinian encampment on the lawn of Columbia University as they stormed the campus to clear out anti-Israel protestors on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York, N.Y. New York Post
The coalition of 116 student groups at the Ivy League school — who called themselves “Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization” in a since-deleted Instagram post last August — also led the charge in the violent raid of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April.
Local and state leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, condemned the protests, calling on school officials to enforce disciplinary codes and impose “swift actions” to punish wrongdoers, a source told The Post at the time.
Khalil told a Post reporter during September’s raucous protests that anti-Israel student organizers were undeterred, and promised to ramp up their actions, including establishing future encampments.
“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Khalil said.
“Not only protests and encampments, the limit is the sky.”
Last April, during the height of the encampment protests, Khalil told the Columbia Daily Spectator that he was not personally participating in the protests over concerns he would lose his student visa — which allowed him to remain in the US.
He was briefly suspended that month, but the suspension was reversed the very next day, he told BBC at the time.
“[They said] that after reviewing the evidence, they don’t have any evidence to suspend,” he said.
Khymani James, 20, a prominent spokesperson for the Hamas-cheering radical collective led by Khalil, was banned from campus in the wake of the April protests after a video surfaced of them expressing violent and hateful rhetoric toward Jews.
“The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” said James.
James later offered a tepid apology, but laid the blame at the foot of “right-wing agitators,” claiming they were targeted for being “visibly queer and black.”
Last spring’s encampment continued to expand until April 18, when Columbia president Minouche Shafik — who soon after resigned under pressure — finally called on the NYPD to enter the campus and break it up after protesters ignored warnings to leave.
Cops arrested 108 participants at Columbia, which sparked a movement of solidarity protests of similar encampments at university campuses across the country.
An ICE agent reportedly told Khalil’s lawyer Greer that the agency was enforcing a State Department edict to revoke Khalil’s student visa as well as his green card, pursuant to Trump’s recent pledge to deport foreign student “agitators” responsible for fomenting campus unrest.
The news comes just days after Trump announced plans to yank about $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia due to its noncompliance with anti-discrimination laws.