Who is Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University agitator detained by ICE for deportation?
The Columbia University grad taken into custody by federal immigration officials Saturday is a Palestinian former student and known campus agitator.Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents aided a Columbia -owned apartment inhabited by Mahmoud Khalil, who fronts a radical group, Columbia United Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which sympathizes with terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and calls for the “end of Western Civilization.”According to his LinkedIn, Khalil briefly served as a political affairs officer with UNRWA – a UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees – which was stripped of tens of millions in federal funding after an explosive report that some of its members took part in the Oct.7, 2023 Hamas attack against Israel in which 1,200 people were killed. Khalil and CUAD have been at the forefront of chaotic and at times violent campus protests at Columbia University and Barnard College dating back to at least last spring, which have resulted in injuries, damage to buildings and striking fear into the heart of Jewish students and faculty.After receiving his undergraduate degree in Beirut, Khalil – born in Syria in 1995 – enrolled at Columbia, where he earned his graduate degree at the School of International and Public Affairs in December and was a driving force behind many of the anti-Israel protests, building takeovers and encampments that have plagued the school for more than a year.According to his lawyer, Amy Greer, Khalil is a permanent US resident with a green card.
He served as CUAD’s lead negotiator with the schools’ administration on numerous occasions, including during last spring’s Gaza solidarity encampment, during which scores of tents were erected on the Ivy League school’s campus lawn.He was suspended from Columbia last April for taking part in the demonstrations, but the suspension was reversed the next day due to lack of evidence, Khalil told a BBC reporter at the time.He’s been a regular fixture on news programs d...