Anti-Israel demonstrators marched in Times Square on Saturday night to protest the arrest and imprisonment of Colombian graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.
Animated Khalil supporters withstanded the rain in Midtown, chanting and displaying signs including “Free Mahmoud Khalil Now!”, “Missing our Student's Hands”, and various other slogans.
Controversial anti-Israel advocate Linda Sarsool spoke at the event and attracted protesters around former Colombian students.
On Friday, Louisiana immigration judge Jamie Comans ruled that the Trump administration could deport Syrian-born Halil on his involvement in a 2024 wild anti-Israel demonstration at Columbia University.
Khalil's lawyers made the decision and harped the free speech considerations being played in deportation cases.
“Our constitution allows people to speak their minds,” Khalil's lawyer Mark van der Hout said Friday after the decision.
“The Nazis in this country can be demonstrated by the Supreme Court and express their beliefs, not Mahmoud Khalil. KuKluxKlan can march and express that belief, but not Mahmoud Khalil,” argued Van Der Hout.
The former Columbia graduate student was taken into custody by an ICE agent on March 8th in the lobby of his university-funded Manhattan apartment.
The Department of Homeland Security said Halil was illegally in the country as his student visa was revoked due to political activities on campus.
Halil was one of the leaders of the Columbia University protests in 2024 and was the primary negotiator and representative to demonstrate students who set up camp at the Morningside Heights campus.
On Thursday, it was revealed that the important evidence regarding the Trump administration's lawsuit against Khalil was a roughly two-page letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In the letter, Rubio characterized the ongoing presence of Halil in the United States as “potentially serious and unfavourable foreign consequences and would compromise the interests of an attractive US foreign policy.”
In the letter, Rubio argued that it is a US policy of “fighting anti-Semitism around the world and across the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States and America.”
