The wife of a detained Palestinian Colombian student said she naively believed he was immune to arrest
Two days before U.S. agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia students and Palestinian activists asked his wife if she knew what to do if immigrant agents came to their doorstep.
Khalil’s wife, who has been over for many years, said she was confused. As a legal permanent resident of the United States, Khalil certainly didn’t have to worry about that.
“I didn’t take him seriously. Obviously I’m naive,” Abdullah, an eight-month-old American citizen, told Reuters in her first media interview.
DHS agents wore their husbands Saturday in the lobby of a University-owned apartment building. The arrest of Harrier was one of the first efforts of Republican President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in January to fulfill his promise to expel some foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement.
Abdalla, a 28-year-old New York-based dentist, sat in the front row of a Manhattan court earlier Wednesday, and Khalil’s lawyers argued to a federal judge that he was arrested for his blunt advocacy in the October 2023 2023 military attack on Gaza by the militant group Hamas Hamas in October 2023. They told the judge that this violated Khalil’s constitutional right to freedom of speech.
While considering whether the arrest is the constitution, the judge expanded his orders to prevent Harrier’s deportation.
Trump once said there is no evidence that Khalil, 30, promoted Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic group that ruled Gaza. His administration has said that Harrier has not been charged or charged with crime, but Trump said his presence in the United States “violates national and foreign policy interests.”
A Columbia University student has been arrested by U.S. immigration agents and is now facing deportation for participating in pro-Palestinian protests. It was one of the first known arrests related to the Trump administration’s threat to student activists.
On Sunday, the Trump administration transferred Khalil from the U.S. immigration and customs enforcement prison in Elizabeth near Manhattan to a prison in about 2,000 kilometers in rural Jena, Louisiana.
Abdalla and Khalil, a volunteer program held in Lebanon in 2016, is overseen in a nonprofit organization that provides educational scholarships for Syrian youth. They started as friends before a seven-year long-distance relationship, leading to a New York wedding in 2023.
“He is the most incredible person who cares most about other people,” she said. “He is the kindest, true soul.”
The couple is looking forward to their first child in late April. She said she hoped Khalil would be free then. She showed Reuters a recent ultrasound picture: a boy whose name has not been selected.
“I think it would be very devastating for me and him to meet his first child behind the glass screen,” Abdullah said. “I have always been happy to have my first child with someone I love.”
The government said it had begun litigation for expelling Khalil and had been defending the court proceedings before that.
Trump called the anti-Semitic movement of the anti-Israel student protest movement and said Khalil’s “is the first arrest for many in the future.”
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and came to the United States with a student visa in 2022 and received a U.S. permanent residence green card last year. He completed his studies at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs in December, but has not yet obtained his master’s degree.
He became a high-profile member of the Ivy League University student protest movement, often as one of the chief negotiators with the Colombian government, involved protesters for years, demanding investments in endowments from its $14.8 billion arms manufacturer and other companies supporting the Israeli government.
According to Israeli elements, more than 1,200 people were killed in the Israeli invaded by Hamas, and according to Israeli statistics, 251 people were hijacked by Gaza. Since then, according to Gaza health officials, the Israeli attacks have caused more than 48,000 Palestinians, although Tali may have been more frequent, as more than 10,000 people were missing and believed to be lost under rubble.
The Trump administration said pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, including Columbia, include support for Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist organization, and anti-Semitism harassment of Jewish students. Student protest organizers say criticism of Israel is in chaos with anti-Semitism.
Jewish teachers in Colombia held a rally and press conference on Monday to support Khalil, holding signs outside a university building on Monday saying “Jews refused to be deported.”
But Abdullah said she was frustrated that no one in the Colombian government had contacted her to help.
She said her husband’s focus is to support his community through advocacy and more direct ways. She made several brief calls with Khalil from the prison, and he told her that he had been helping other detained immigrants fill out forms written by legal persons, donated food to his prison partner and purchased food from his concession account.
“Mahmoud is Palestinian and he has always been interested in Palestinian politics,” she said. “He stood up for his people and fought for his people.”
Abdalla suddenly ended Wednesday’s interview when she saw Khalil calling her from prison.
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