Living with fear, uncertainty: Mahmoud Khalil on the personal toll a year after his ICE arrest

Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News on Mar 9, 2026

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NEW YORK — One year after the arrest of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist acknowledged he was in denial — almost naive — about what was happening to him at the time.

Khalil, 31, a green-card holder with Algerian citizenship, was returning from an Iftar with his pregnant wife, an American citizen, to their Columbia-owned apartment last year when ICE agents arrested him, alleging he was a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. In a matter of hours, he was put on a flight to a Louisiana immigration detention center, where he would be held for 104 days.

As the Trump administration continued to target other international students, Khalil would become the face of the president’s immigration agenda on college campuses.

Khalil and other protesters gathered near Columbia on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of his detention and call on the university to make the campus safer for international students who might be targeted by ICE. In an interview with The News after a press conference, Khalil said the main lesson he’s learned over the last year that “rights will not protect you.”

“I felt like I was so protected then because I knew I never committed a crime,” Khalil said. “I knew I never, you know, broke any law. I knew I’m a permanent resident. I have all these rights. I was even in denial for the first two, three days that it’s only a miscommunication or misunderstanding, and I will be out soon.

“But then, no.”

During the news conference, Khalil said he lives in a “continuous state of uncertainty” with his legal status in limbo.

“It’s really impacting everything in our life,” he said. “I don’t go and walk with my child alone,” fearing he could be detained and his 11-month-old son Deen put at risk.

Khalil also accused Columbia of responding differently to his detention than the recent ICE arrest of Ellie Aghayeva, a student with no known history of participating in pro-Palestinian protests.

“I’m very grateful that Ellie is safe and out, because no one should be targeted the way that she was, the way I was,” he said. “It only took a non-Palestine-related arrest for Columbia to activate.”

“I can’t think other than like, if Columbia activated all this support to me when I was arrested, maybe I would have been there for the birth of my child.”

Khalil believes two factors made the difference: His pro-Palestinian advocacy and Columbia recognizing a shift in public opinion against federal immigration enforcement: “They see now that there is very strong opinions against ICE. So they are riding the wave, as they always do.”

Khalil has previously said his attorney speaks with Columbia’s lawyers and that the university has claimed they can’t speak with him directly while he has a pending lawsuit.

“Columbia supports students’ right to protest and advocate for issues they believe in,” Columbia spokesman Adam Stephan said in a statement. “At the same time, we want to be very clear: no member of Columbia’s leadership or its trustees has ever requested, invited, or coordinated the presence of ICE agents against members of our community.”

Khalil was on the Trump administration’s radar as a negotiator and spokesman for protesters at the pro-Palestinian encampment on Columbia’s campus in spring 2024 during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

After his detention, when it became apparent that the administration’s “threat” doctrine wasn’t standing up to judicial scrutiny, the federal government levied another charge against Khalil: That he failed to disclose pertinent information on his application for legal permanent residency.

He was held in Louisiana for three months until a federal judge released him on bail. But he faced a major legal setback in January when a federal appeals panel ruled that immigration courts, controlled by Trump’s Justice Department, should call the shots in such cases.

Now, Khalil’s options to fight the Trump administration’s deportation efforts are narrowing. Khalil said Monday his lawyers plan to ask the full bench of active judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to review the panel’s decision. In the meantime, he’s also challenging his deportation order to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

During the news conference, Khalil also called for the release of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who remains in ICE detention after she was arrested at a Columbia protest. Mayor Zohran Mamdani also asked for the release of Kordia and an end to the deportation efforts against Khalil when he met with Trump last month.

While Khalil acknowledged the first anniversary of his ICE arrest, he will soon celebrate a happier one-year milestone: Deen’s birthday.

“It’s one of the few things that is really keeping me going,” Khalil said during his interview with The News about the birth of his son. “I felt that it would inhibit my advocacy, but now I see as another reason why I advocate.”

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