In New York, Palestinian rights advocate Mahmoud Khalil has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Columbia University, accusing the school of failing to protect him and other pro-Palestine student activists from harassment. Khalil was arrested by federal immigration agents who ambushed him at his Columbia University apartment building in March 2025. He spent over 100 days in an ICE jail, missing the birth of his first child. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mahmoud Khalil denounced what he called Columbia’s “deliberate indifference and discrimination, aimed at intimidating Palestinian students.”

Mahmoud Khalil: “For over two years, we pleaded with Columbia. Columbia did not care. Our safety and well-being did not serve the ideological project its board of trustees was protecting, so they traded us away. We are suing because no student, regardless of their background, should go through the hell that Columbia put us through over all these years.”