All posts tagged "Mahmoud Khalil"

A 30-year-old Columbia University grad student is suing the Trump administration for $20 million in damages after he was detained by ICE for months, according to USA Today.

Attorneys for Mahmoud Khalil filed the claim on Thursday, alleging that Khalil was "falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted, and smeared as an antisemite, while the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests."

Khalil, a Palestinian activist, helped lead campus protests against Israel. He was apprehended by ICE and detained in a Louisiana facility for over three months, even missing the birth of his first child....

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are not allowing detained pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil to meet with his wife and newborn son, his attorneys told Mehdi Hasan's Zateo News.

Khalil missed his son's birth in April after being arrested by the Trump administration in March.

Reporter Prem Thakker posted to social media, "Mahmoud Khalil's legal team says ICE & private prison contractor GEO Group are refusing to let him have a contact visit with his wife & newborn baby. They traveled over 1500 miles—hoping Mahmoud could see and hold them for the first time since his arrest over 10 weeks ago."...

A doorbell video showed a terrified Turkish national in a hijab being handcuffed and led away by agents from the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday near the Tufts University campus in Massachusetts.

The attorney for Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, said the grad student was heading to meet friends to break the Ramadan fast when she was surrounded by officers and pulled from the street.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino gave a breakdown of the video....

In a CNN interview Monday, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union likened the arrest of a pro-Palestinian Columbia University student to 1950s McCarthyism.

The name of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led the "Red Scare" congressional hearings to root out alleged communists, is now synonymous with the political persecution of left-wing liberals.

The Department of Homeland Security announced on X on Sunday night that “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism, and in coordination with the Department of State, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student. Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." ...