New York

ICE Arrests Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia

Published

1 year ago

March 9, 2025

ICE Arrests Pro-Palestinian Activist at Columbia

Federal immigration authorities on Saturday detained a well-known activist who played a major role in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian student movement last year, his lawyer said on Sunday.

The arrest of the activist, a legal permanent resident of the United States, was a significant escalation of President Trump’s crackdown on what he has called antisemitic campus activity.

The activist, Mahmoud Khalil, is of Palestinian heritage and graduated in December with a master’s degree from the university’s school of international affairs, according to his LinkedIn. His lawyer, Amy Greer, confirmed that he was a green card holder and said the arrest would face a vigorous legal challenge.

“We will vigorously be pursuing Mahmoud’s rights in court, and will continue our efforts to right this terrible and inexcusable — and calculated — wrong committed against him,” Ms. Greer said in a statement. The arrest, she said, “follows the U.S. government’s open repression of student activism and political speech.”

Ms. Greer said she was not sure of Mr. Khalil’s “precise whereabouts,” and that he may have been transferred as far away as Louisiana. Mr. Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, tried to visit him at a detention center in New Jersey but was told he was not being held there, Ms. Greer said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement on Sunday night that Mr. Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”

“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” she said. “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared a link on X to a news article about Mr. Khalil’s arrest and issued a broad promise: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

The immigration agents who detained Mr. Khalil told him his student visa had been revoked, Ms. Greer said, even though he does not currently hold such a visa. Revoking a green card is quite rare, said Elora Mukherjee, the director of the immigrants’ rights clinic at Columbia Law School, and in a vast majority of cases where it does happen, the holder has been accused and convicted of criminal offenses, she said.

If the government was to revoke Mr. Khalil’s green card “in retaliation for his public speech, that is prohibited by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Ms. Mukherjee said, adding that she was still learning details about this particular case.

Jodi Ziesemer, the director of the immigrant protection unit at the New York Legal Assistance Group, said the revocation process is typically lengthy. A green card holder can be detained, but not deported, during that process, she said.

Mr. Khalil was a fixture at the protests that engulfed Columbia last spring, making the Manhattan campus the national epicenter of demonstrations against the war in Gaza. He described his role to reporters as a negotiator and spokesman for Columbia’s pro-Palestinian group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

The Trump administration has made Columbia the first target of its push to punish what the president has deemed elite schools’ failures to protect Jewish students during campus protests.

On Friday, the administration announced that it had canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to the university. In a social media post last week, Mr. Trump vowed to punish individual protesters his administration considered “agitators.”

“All federal funding will STOP for any College, School or University that allows illegal protests,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”

In a statement on Sunday, Columbia administrators did not comment directly on the arrest.

“Columbia is committed to complying with all legal obligations and supporting our student body and campus community,” the statement read. “We are also committed to the legal rights of our students and urge all members of the community to be respectful of those rights.”

The arrest drew swift condemnation from some free speech groups, immigrant rights’ activists and politicians on Sunday.

Donna Lieberman, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that the detention “reeks of McCarthyism.” She added that the arrest was “a frightening escalation of Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech and an aggressive abuse of immigration law.”

Zohran Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman who is running for mayor, called the detention “a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump.” Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has faced backlash from some pro-Israel groups for his criticism of Israel.

And Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement, “This blatantly unconstitutional act sends a deplorable message that freedom of speech is no longer protected in America.”

But the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, which has been calling for aggressive action against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, praised Mr. Khalil’s detention in a series of social media posts, calling Mr. Khalil, without evidence, a “ringleader“ of the chaos at Columbia.

Mr. Khalil told Reuters before his arrest on Saturday that he feared that he would be targeted by the federal government.

“Clearly Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system,” he said.

Mr. Khalil was active as a negotiator for protesters last week at Barnard College, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia, which erupted after the college announced that it was expelling two students for disrupting a course on modern Israel. When Barnard’s president, Laura Rosenbury, called protesters on the phone to negotiate during one sit-in on campus, Mr. Khalil held up a megaphone to amplify her voice.

Mr. Khalil himself was briefly suspended from Columbia last spring for his role in the protests before the school reversed the decision. He has a diplomatic background and has worked at the British Embassy in Beirut, according to an online biography.

Over the last few days, critics of the protest movement at Columbia have singled out Mr. Khalil on social media. Shai Davidai, a vocal pro-Israel professor at Columbia who was barred from campus after the university said he intimidated and harassed employees, called on Mr. Rubio to deport Mr. Khalil.

Sharon Otterman contributed reporting.

Click to comment

New York

Judge Zahid Quraishi Ejects New Jersey Federal Prosecutor From Court, Orders Testimony on Office Leadership Structure

Published

4 days ago

March 17, 2026

Press Room

Judge Zahid Quraishi Ejects New Jersey Federal Prosecutor From Court, Orders Testimony on Office Leadership Structure

1

2

3

MR. ROSENBLUM: He is not personally supervising anything to do with this case.

THE COURT: The office, I’m talking about.

The

21

4 current office that you work at, the folks that you will

5

6

7

8

represent are running it, that are the leaders of the U.S. Attorneys Office that are operating it, is the exact same triumvirate, Ms. Fox and Mr. Lamparello and Mr. Fontecchio,
the same triumvirate that Judge Brann ruled was unlawful,

9 right?

10

11

12

13

MR. ROSENBLUM: Correct, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay.

All right. Well, I’m going require their testimony, as

I directed before. I’m going to schedule a hearing in two

14 weeks. I will determine the date and time later this

15

16

17

18

afternoon. I will text order it, but I’m going to require the testimony of this triumvirate. So all three, Ms. Fox, Mr. Lamparello, and Mr. Fontecchio will testify. They will be sequestered. Just to be clear, they will be sequestered.
19 They will not be sitting in this courtroom listening to each 20 other testify, and they’re going to answer my questions about who is running this office and how.

21

22

23

24

25

And then we will have a proper factual record, I believe, for me to then determine if I need legal briefing on how you can proceed with this sentencing hearing, or I might be able to just make the determination after I have that

United States District Court
District of New Jersey

New York

Video: Fast-Moving Fire in Queens Kills 4, Including a Child

Published

4 days ago

March 16, 2026

Press Room

Video: Fast-Moving Fire in Queens Kills 4, Including a Child

new video loaded: Fast-Moving Fire in Queens Kills 4, Including a Child

transcript

Fast-Moving Fire in Queens Kills 4, Including a Child

Fierce winds fueled a blaze in a mixed-use building on Monday, killing four people and injuring 12 others, officials said.

: I can tell you that the Fire Department did an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances, putting this fire out and saving people. I can’t thank them enough for their continued efforts and commitment to life safety.
Advertisement

Fierce winds fueled a blaze in a mixed-use building on Monday, killing four people and injuring 12 others, officials said.

By Jamie Leventhal and Jackie Molloy

March 16, 2026

New York

How an Artist Lives on $36,000 a Year on the Upper West Side

Published

5 days ago

March 16, 2026

Press Room

How an Artist Lives on ,000 a Year on the Upper West Side

How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.

We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?

“I’m really lucky,” Gaya Palmer said, sitting in the cheerful kitchen of the 380-square-foot studio apartment she moved into around 1972. She has had many different jobs — she even drove a cab for a year — and currently describes herself as an artist, jewelry designer, novelty product designer, voice-over artist, songwriter, short story author and children’s book writer.

Her luck comes in the form of a rent-stabilized apartment in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan. When she signed the lease, she paid around $215 a month. Now, her rent is $977.

Sure, she had to do some plastering and painting herself when she moved in, and a mouse once lived in the oven, but she’s got 11-foot ceilings, a huge window and a little patio. Her income is around $36,000 a year, with $4,000 being withdrawn annually from 401(k) accounts and the rest from Social Security.

She loves the community she has built. “I was born when I came to New York City,” she said. She knows just about everyone on her street and has friends all over town. Plus, her sister lives in the building next door. “That’s the gift of the landlord gods,” she said.

She is energized by being around other creative New Yorkers each day and acknowledges that affordable rent makes it possible.

“The invisible vitality of New York City is the creative force of artists, actors and writers,” she said. “If you take away rent-stabilized apartments, you’re going to end up with a bunch of boring suits walking around looking for where the next bank is going to open.”

A Custom Space, Decades in the Making

Ms. Palmer’s red, black and white apartment is impeccably organized, with everything in its place. “I’m a double Virgo,” she explained. Last year, she and her unique space starred in a video that was widely shared on social media.

Quite a bit of Ms. Palmer’s furniture was found on the street, although she bought the three dressers in her living room at Housing Works for $150.

She has polka-dot seating made from foam cushions that sit on plywood boxes, with storage inside. The seats were custom-built by a gentleman who is no longer in the picture, whom she referred to as “Mr. Wrong.”

The building was constructed in the 1880s, and her apartment used to be the front parlor. Ms. Palmer, 76, sleeps in a loft bed in what is technically a hallway. Her father built the wood bed about 40 years ago.

“I call it heaven because it is heavenly, it’s soft — the bed is like all foam — and comfortable,” she said. “In the winter it’s cozy, in the summer my air-conditioner is right above.” Plus, she added, “I have a library up there.”

No Need for a Dishwasher

Underneath the sleep loft is her workstation, where she creates jewelry and kinetic wall sculptures. She sells her creations on her website and keeps the business side of things running by paying for services like Google One storage for $10 and Canva for $13.

There are no laundry facilities in the building, so she carts her clothes, towels, sheets and comforters to a laundromat a few blocks away, where it’s about $45 to get everything cleaned and dried.

And Ms. Palmer doesn’t live alone. She has Betty, a 13-year-old rescue Chihuahua whom she adopted about three years ago. Betty sees the vet every couple of months, which costs about $90, and goes through a lot of kibble, at around $25 a month.

Ms. Palmer’s efficient kitchen includes a bar made from a repurposed bookcase that she found on the street and a compact, counter-height refrigerator. “Thank goodness it doesn’t hold ice cream,” she joked. It does, however, hold Boursin cheese, one of her favorite foods. “It’s $10 at Fairway,” she said, “so I go to Trader Joe’s — it’s $5.”

There’s a sign in her kitchen that reads, in all capital letters, “YOU CAN DESIGN YOUR LIFE.” She took it from the wall of a poolside bar in the Dominican Republic, years ago, and considers it her central ethos.

She doesn’t dream of having a dishwasher, a doorman or other luxury amenities. “I’m grateful, thankful, joyful that I have a roof over my head,” she said.

“My home is my mansion,” she said, “and I don’t need anything more than this.”

Out and About

Ms. Palmer has a standing monthly lunch date with a close friend; they always go to Cafe Luxembourg. “We meet at 2:30, and we leave after the candles are brought out for dinner,” she said.

Ms. Palmer usually orders a burger, a couple of cosmopolitans and a hot fudge sundae, spending around $125, including the tip. “They have the best burger in New York City,” Ms. Palmer insisted. “Even my sister-in-law from Ohio said it was the best burger she’s ever had.”

Her friends invite her to Broadway shows and events at Lincoln Center. She also loves to visit the Museum of Modern Art ($22) because creativity is central to her life. She used to work as a lead document processing operator at large law firms. “I still would come home and make art because I had to have that balance,” she said. “Once I resigned, I was able to make art all the time.”

Sometimes she stays in and reads, or watches the news, home decorating shows or detective shows. Her Spectrum cable TV bill is around $87, and she pays $83 for YouTube TV.

Every now and then, she takes a $25 cab instead of the subway or walking. She doesn’t shop much. She hasn’t traveled out of the country in a few years. But if she sold a large piece of artwork and had an extra $1,500, she would spend it on a trip, maybe to Rio, she said.

In the meantime, she often hosts friends for wine and cheese. And just the other day, her apartment was the setting for a spontaneous dance party with some Juilliard students she’d run into.

She can’t imagine living anywhere else. If she were back in Ohio, where she grew up, she said: “I’d have a husband that I’d be divorced from by now, and I’d be mowing the lawn.”

“That’s not a life I want,” she said.

“When I wake up, if I can stand up — and I’m standing up and I’m in New York City — that’s all that’s important,” she said. “I’m vertical and I’m in New York.”