Federal agents arrested Khalil, who was born in Syria and has ties to Algeria, on Saturday. The recent Columbia graduate holds a green card and is reportedly married to a US citizen. The Trump administration has said that he led anti-Israel protests on Columbia’s campus, and the White House said that he has supported Hamas, which would be grounds for his deportation.
Randy Fine, a Republican, Jewish Florida state senator who is running for Congress, wrote that "Trump Tower has been invaded by Muslim terrorists seeking the release of Muslim terrorist Mahmoud Khalil."
"Every non-American at this Muslim terror rally should be immediately deported to Gaza," he wrote.
Khalil and seven unnamed Columbia and Barnard students filed a lawsuit on Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Columbia University and its president; Barnard College and its president; and the House Committee on Education and Workforce and its chair, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.).
The plaintiffs demand that the university and the college refrain from turning student records over to Congress, particularly in response to Walberg’s Feb. 13 letter asking Columbia to produce disciplinary records for “numerous antisemitic incidents that have taken place at Columbia since the fall 2024 semester began.”
Providing such records would violate the First Amendment right of the students to free speech by “exposing the students to negative publicity and investigation,” per the lawsuit.
“Given the plentitude of evidence of members of Congress and President Trump actively attempting to strip universities and others of funding, to roll back contractual obligations and to ban certain media outlets from the White House because the president does not like what they publish, entities like the university feel pressure to cooperate with the government in its efforts to chill and punish protected speech and protest activity,” the plaintiffs allege.
