US to deport foreign student who held protest on campus in support of Palestine

Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024.

Immigration officers have arrested a leader of the protests at Columbia University against Israel's war in Gaza after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to deport foreign pro-Palestinian student demonstrators. 

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent faces of the university's protest movement that erupted in response to Israel's conduct of the war, was arrested on March 9, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on X.

The agency said the action was taken "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism, and in coordination with the Department of State."

Khalil's arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump's promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza.

U.S. campuses including Columbia's in New York were rocked by student protests against Israel's war in Gaza. The demonstrations ignited accusations of anti-Semitism.