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Mahmoud Khalil turns out to have been far more than the innocent student protester — not a leader, but just one among so many — whom he pretends to be. More on the latest news about Mahmoud Khalil can be found here: “US says Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil hid UNRWA work,” Reuters, March
The US government has alleged that Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil withheld that he worked for a United Nations Palestinian relief agency in his visa application, saying that should be grounds for deportation.
The UN agency known as UNRWA provides food and healthcare to Palestinian refugees and has become a flashpoint in the Israeli war in Gaza. Israel contends that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leading the US to halt funding of the group.
The administration of US President Donald Trump on March 8 detained Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian campus protests that rocked the New York City campus last year, and sent him to Louisiana in an attempt to remove him from the country.
The case has drawn attention as a test of free speech rights, with supporters of Khalil saying he was targeted for publicly disagreeing with US policy on Israel and its occupation of Gaza. Khalil has called himself a political prisoner.
The US alleges Khalil’s presence or activities in the country would have serious foreign policy consequences.
Khalil, whether he is an actual agent of Hamas, or merely a fellow traveler of the terror group, might be able, given his proven organizing skills, to influence student protesters far beyond the Columbia campus. And they, in turn, wielding their political power, could pressure the government to adopt policies inimical to Israel.
US District Judge Jesse Furman ordered Khalil not to be deported while his lawsuit challenging his detention, known as a habeas petition, is heard in another federal court.
Khalil, a native of Syria and citizen of Algeria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022 and later filed to become a permanent resident in 2024.
In a court brief dated Sunday, the US government outlined its arguments for keeping Khalil in custody while his removal proceedings continue, arguing first that the US District Court in New Jersey, where the habeas case is being heard, lacked jurisdiction.
The brief also says Khalil “withheld membership in certain organizations” which should be grounds for his deportation.
Khalil did not declare organization affiliation
It references a March 17 document in his deportation case that informed Khalil he could be removed because he failed to disclose that he was a political officer of UNRWA in 2023.
The UN said in August an investigation found nine of the agency’s 32,000 staff members may have been involved in the October 7 attacks.
In fact, the IDF has identified 12 UNRWA staff who took a direct part in the atrocities committed by, and believes there may have been more. Furthermore, documents seized by the IDF in Gaza prove conclusively that many hundreds of UNRWA staffers belong to Hamas. UNRWA staffers in Gaza has been found working hand-in-glove with Hamas, raising no objections to the terror group’s use of UNRWA facilities, including schools and UNRWA office buildings, to hide its operatives and their weapons. And only now we find out that Mahmoud Khalil worked for UNRWA in 2023 as a political officer, information that he failed to reveal on his visa application in 2024. Undoubtedly that was because he knew that by then, UNRWA would be looked on askance by the Americans because of the hundreds of its staffers who were members of Hamas, and the dozen or so who took part in he October 7 attacks. That information about Khalil’s work for UNRWA would certainly have prevented his visa application from being approved.
The US court notice also accuses Khalil of leaving off his visa application that he worked for the Syria office in the British embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).
Why did Khalil leave out of his visa application his work in the Syria office of the British Embassy in Beirut? Let us make an educated guess: he was favorable to the jihadist groups fighting against Assad, such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and encouraged the British he was advising to support those rebels despite, or possibly because, of their jihadist inclinations. That’s something he must have worried that the US government would investigate, if he let them know he had worked at the British Embassy. The Americans could have made inquiries of the Embassy’s British staff, discovered from them what kinds of reports Khalil produced, and would undoubtedly be alarmed by his support for such people as Abu Muhammad al-Julani (now Ahmed al-Sharaa), with his history of being a supporter of Al-Qaeda.
Furthermore , why did Mahmoud Khalil hide from the government that he was a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD)? Had he revealed that, the government would then discover that CUAD was virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel, calling for the Jewish state’s destruction and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state, that it had been behind the harassment of Jewish students — including physical attacks — on the Columbia campus, and the invasion and vandalism of campus buildings, and the beating by its members of Columbia janitors who tried to stop them. And Mahmoud Khalil was not just one among many members of CUAD: he was its head. He directed the harassment, the genocidal chants, the destruction of university property, the attacks on university staff. Better not to mention his connection to CUAD. Unfortunately for him, videos exist that show Mahmoud Khalil leading the protesters in their campus demonstration and serving as their spokesmen to the media.
Attorneys for Khalil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What can they say, after all? That Mahmoud Khalil didn’t think the government had a right to know about his links to Hamas-favoring UNRWA? Or to find out that he had made the case for Syrian jihadists while working at the British embassy in Beirut? Or, even more damning, that he was not merely a member, but the head of the CUAD mob that caused such mental anguish and physical fear to Jewish students and professors at Columbia this past year, and such damage to Columbia buildings?
Withholding full information from the federal government when applying for a visa is enough to prevent that applicant’s visa from being approved, or in cases where the visa had been issued, to have it evoked. Khalil’s green card will now be revoked, his deportation order will be approved, and he will be escorted to a plane — still calling himself a victim of a political witch hunt by Trump’s “fascists” — that will take him, this recalcitrant deportee who hates the country he wants to stay in, to the country of which he is a citizen, and where he so clearly belongs: Algeria.
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