White House pressures Columbia University as it seeks to deport pro-Palestinian activists

Protesters march on campus against the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at UC Berkeley on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, in Berkeley, Calif. (Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP) (Santiago Mejia/AP)

NEW YORK — The White House complained Tuesday that Columbia University is refusing to help federal agents find people being sought as part of the government’s effort to deport participants in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, as the administration continued to punish the school by yanking federal research dollars.

Immigration enforcement agents on Saturday arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and Palestinian activist who played a prominent part in protests at Columbia last year. He is now facing possible deportation.

President Donald Trump has vowed additional arrests. In a briefing with reporters in Washington, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said federal authorities have been “using intelligence” to identify other people involved in campus demonstrations critical of Israel that the administration considered to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas.”

She said Columbia had been given names and was refusing to help the Department of Homeland Security “to identify those individuals on campus.”

“As the president said very strongly in his statement yesterday, he is not going to tolerate that,” Leavitt said.

A spokesperson for Columbia University did not directly respond to a message seeking comment on the administration’s response but referred The Associated Press to a letter sent to students Monday by Interim President Katrina Armstrong.

“We will follow the law, as has always been the case, and rumors suggesting that any member of Columbia leadership requested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on or near campus are false,” the letter stated.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it was pulling $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia, accusing the school of failing to stop antisemitism on campus. As part of those cuts, the National Institutes of Health late Monday said it was cutting more than $250 million in funding, which included more than 400 grants.

X. Edward Guo, director of Columbia’s Bone Bioengineering Laboratory, posted a screenshot on X of an email he received notifying him that one of his NIH awards had been canceled. “We understand this may be shocking news,” the email reads.

The university was wracked last spring by large demonstrations by students calling for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza and a recognition of Palestinians' human rights and territorial claims. The university ultimately called in police to dismantle a protest encampment and end a student takeover of an administration building.

Khalil, 30, had been a spokesperson for the protesters. He hasn’t been charged with any crimes, but Leavitt said the administration had moved to deport him under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport a non-citizen if the government “has reasonable ground to believe” the person’s presence could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

As of Tuesday, Khalil was being held at an immigration detention center in Louisiana.

Civil rights groups and Khalil’s attorneys say the government is unconstitutionally using its immigration-control powers to stop him from speaking out. A federal judge set a hearing for Wednesday and ordered the government not to deport him in the meantime.

Trump, a Republican, has suggested that some protesters support Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251. Israel responded with bombardment and other military offensives that have left over 48,000 Palestinians dead in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Israel says more than 17,000 were militants.

Trump heralded Khalil’s arrest as the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students the president described as engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

Immigration agents also tried to arrest another international student at Columbia, but they weren’t allowed into an apartment where she was, according to a union representing the student.

Khalil, who finished his requirements for a Columbia master’s degree in December, and protest leaders have said they are anti-war, not antisemitic. They note that some Jewish students and groups have joined the demonstrations. A Columbia disciplinary body recently told Khalil it was investigating whether he violated a new harassment policy by calling a school official “genocidal.”

Leavitt didn’t detail specific wrongdoing by Khalil. But she said he had organized protests that disrupted classes, harassed Jewish students and “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, fliers with the logo of Hamas.”

Born in Syria, Khalil is a grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyers said in a legal filing. It didn’t address his citizenship but said his relatives have been displaced anew amid Syria’s civil war and are now in other countries.

Khalil is married to a U.S. citizen, who is expecting their first child.

“For everyone reading this, I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby,” his wife, who has not been publicly identified, wrote in a statement provided by his lawyers. “I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world.”