Time - Buried in the trove of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in his first weeks in office was a directive linked to last year’s campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. The order called for the revocation of student visas for individuals suspected of sympathizing with Hamas. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump’s executive order said.
On Saturday night, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) followed through on Trump's threat, detaining Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at New York City's Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year became a national lightning rod amid a debate about the Middle East conflict. Khalil led negotiations between protesters and university officials last spring, and graduated from Columbia with a master’s degree in December.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on Monday afternoon, personally taking credit for Khalil’s arrest. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again.”
Khalil’s situation immediately drew international attention because of the reason he was detained, and because, according to his lawyer Amy Greer, he holds a green card, which allows individuals to live and work permanently in the United States.
A habeas corpus petition was filed on Khalil’s behalf challenging the legality of his arrest and detention. He got some reprieve on Monday evening, when a judge from the Southern District of New York ruled that he “shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise.”
Khalil's wife, who is eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen and was also threatened with arrest, according to Greer. Khalil is currently being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., according to an ICE database. More
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