A student who played a prominent role during pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York City last year has been detained by federal immigration officials, says his lawyer.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, was lead student negotiator for the encampment at the campus on the west side of Manhattan.
His attorney, Amy Greer, told the BBC that Mr Khalil was inside his university-owned home when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took him into custody on Saturday.
Columbia was the epicentre last year of pro-Palestinian student protests nationwide against the war in Gaza and US support for Israel.
The BBC has contacted the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State and Columbia University for comment.
Ms Greer said the ICE agents told Mr Khalil his student visa had been revoked, but she said her client is a legal permanent resident with a green card and married to an American citizen.
“Initially we were informed this morning that he had been transferred to an ICE facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” Ms Greer said.
“However, when his wife – a US citizen who is eight months’ pregnant and was threatened with arrest as well by the ICE agents last night – tried to visit him there today, she was told he is not detained there.”
She said she is unaware of Mr Khalil’s current location, although an online detainee locator search on the ICE website indicates a Syrian-born individual named Mahmoud Khalil was being held at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility in New Jersey.
Ms Greer said they had heard that Mr Khalil could be transferred as far away as Louisiana, without adding details.
The lawyer said what happened to her client is a “terrible and inexcusable – and calculated – wrong”.
During the protests last summer, Mr Khalil said he was leading negotiations with university administrators on behalf of the student protesters.
They had set up a huge tent encampment on the university lawn in protest against the Gaza war.
Some students also seized control of an academic building for several hours before police entered the campus to arrest them. Mr Khalil was not in that group.
He later told the BBC he had been temporarily suspended by the university, where he is a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs.
Mr Khalil’s detention follows President Donald Trump’s executive order in January warning anyone involved in “pro-jihadist protests” and “all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses” would be deported.
Some Jewish students at Columbia have said that rhetoric at the demonstrations at times crossed the line into antisemitism. Other Jewish students on campus have joined the pro-Palestinian protests.
The Trump administration last week announced it was revoking $400m (£310m) in federal grants to Columbia, accusing it of failing to fight antisemitism on campus.
Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong said in a campus-wide email on Friday that “the cancellation of these funds will immediately impact research and other critical functions of the University”.
The Israeli military launched its campaign against Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel on 7 October 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage.
More than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s military action, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
