Federal authorities’ arrest this weekend of a green card-holding former graduate student at his Columbia University-supported apartment — evidently for his public role in pro-Palestine or anti-Israel campus protests — exposed the wide rift the issue has opened between Democratic mayoral candidates in New York City.
Comptroller Brad Lander, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, state senators Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, and former Assemblymember Michael Blake all issued statements by Monday lambasting Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and calling for his immediate release, with Adams characterizing it as “blatant authoritarianism” and Lander calling it an “egregious violation of the First Amendment, and a frightening weaponization of immigration law.”
Other Democrats, however, remained silent about the front-page news as of Monday afternoon.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, who’s previously claimed that campus protesters in the city were mostly “outside agitators,” noted that local authorities don’t cooperate with ICE while declining to comment on the arrest itself.
Responding to a question about Khalil at an unrelated event later on Monday, Adams said “if he has a gun, he needs to go.” There is no information indicating that Khalil ever had a gun.
The press team for mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, who as governor signed an executive order requiring New York State to divest from any company that supported the movement to force companies to divest from Israel, didn’t return a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the former city comptroller Scott Stringer declined to comment.
It’s a politically fraught issue in a city that’s home to about 1.1 million Jews, more than any other city in the world, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims.
Support for Israel nationally has plummeted among Democrats as the Palestinian death toll shot up over the course of Israel’s extended response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Foley Square to protest the detention by immigration officials of pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, March 10, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Hundreds of demonstrators flooded Foley Square across from ICE Headquarters late Monday afternoon calling for Khalil’s release. The assembled included immigrant activist Ravi Ragbir, who was targeted and detained and faced deportation for his activism during the first Trump administration. At the time, Ragbir had an outstanding order of deportation, unlike Khalil who has an active green card.
“There is no grounds to keep him in,” Ragbir told THE CITY as he stood in the crowd. “Unless it’s an intimidation tactic, unless it’s about creating fear, not among the immigrants only, but among the students and among the people that we can take you away for any reason because we are immune.”
Calls for Compliance
Khalil, a recent graduate student in public administration, regularly played a key role as negotiator and spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian encampments that grew at Columbia and spread to campuses across the nation last spring, calling on universities to divest from companies profiting off of Israel’s war.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that ICE had entered his university apartment near Columbia’s campus the previous night. In a statement from his attorney Amy Greer on Sunday, ICE initially claimed his student visa was revoked, something the Trump administration had promised to do shortly after taking office for “student visas of all Hamas sympathizers.”
When Khalil, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, informed the officers he was a green card-holder, “the ICE agents detained him anyway,” Greer said, addinga habeas corpus petition challenging his detention had been filed. His wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, was also threatened with arrest but not detained, Greer said.
On Monday, President Trump said on the social network that he owns, Truth Social, that ICE had “proudly” arrested Khalil and promised, “this is the first arrest of many to come.” The Associated Press reported on Monday that ICE had visited the apartment of another Columbia student activist but had been turned away at the door.
Khalil’s detention marks a dramatic escalation by the Trump administration in targeting pro-Palestinian activists and universities where student encampments flourished last spring. The administration claims it’s part of an effort to root out on-campus anti-semitism while critics charge it’s an effort to shut down any critical speech about Israel.
Late last week the Trump administration announced it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with the university, saying “Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students.”
As of Monday afternoon, Columbia had yet to comment directly on Khalil’s arrest, instead issuing two back-to-back statements Sunday saying there had been reports of ICE in and around campus and adding the university had a protocol in place “which includes phone numbers to call in case you are approached on or off campus.”
“Law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings,” an unsigned statement read, declining to specify if this had happened in the case of Khalil’s arrest.
“Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community,” a “further statement” added hours later.
Trump was blunt in his social media post about the compliance he expects, writing that “If you support terrorism… you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to Comply. Thank you!”
Hours later, the Education Department posted a letter warning 60 more universities nationwide, including New York University and the Binghamton, Purchase and Rockland campuses of New York’s State University system they would be subjects “of potential enforcement actions if institutions do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.”
During the protests last spring, Khalil was threatened with suspension as he faced allegations of misconduct by administrators, he’d told the Associated Press last week. The administration had threatened to put a hold on his transcript to bar him from graduating, only to walk that back after a lawyer got involved, the news wire reported.
Khalil’s attorneys and wife had been unable to locate him after his arrest Saturday evening, Greer said. His wife tried to find him at the Elizabeth, NJ ICE detention center but was told he wasn’t there. By Monday, ICE’s online detainee locator showed him in a lock-up in Louisiana.
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