Washington, DC – Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader targeted for deportation by President Donald Trump, has met with lawmakers in Washington, DC.
The visit on Tuesday comes just more than a month after the 30-year-old, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was released from immigration custody in Louisiana.
“I’m here in Washington, DC, today to meet with lawmakers, with members of Congress, to demand the end of the US-funded genocide in Gaza, and also to demand accountability from Columbia University, from the Trump administration for their retaliation against my speech,” said Khalil in a video interview with the news agency Reuters.
“To be honest, I feel that this is my duty to continue advocating for Palestinians. This is what the Trump administration tried to do. They tried to silence me. But I’m here to say that we will continue to resist. We are not backing down.”
Khalil continues to face deportation under the Trump administration, which has relied on an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 in its attempts to expel international students involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Under the law, the secretary of state can expel a foreign national if their presence in the country is deemed to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”, although the standard for making that determination remains unclear.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and immigration officials have repeatedly portrayed Khalil’s advocacy as anti-Jewish and supportive of Hamas, but they have failed to provide evidence backing those claims.
Lawyers for Khalil and three other students targeted for deportation by the Trump administration — Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Badar Khan Suri — have argued that their arrests trample on the constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
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