His lawyer says that a student who played a prominent role during the pro -Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York City last year, was detained by federal immigration officials.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian refugee, grew up in Syria, as a negotiator for the main students in the camp on the campus on the western side of Manhattan.
His lawyer, Amy Jarir, told the BBC that Mr. Khalil was inside his university -owned house when they took him for immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) on Saturday.
Colombia was the center of the past year of protests for students who support Palestinians at the country level against the war in Gaza and support the United States for Israel.
BBC contacted the Internal Security Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the University of Colombia on Sunday to comment.
Foreign Minister Marco Rubio later published a news story about X about the arrest of Mr. Khalil, commenting: “We will cancel visas and/or green cards for Hamas supporters in America so that they can be deported.”
Mrs. Jarir said that the ice agents told Mr. Khalil that the student’s visa had been canceled, but she said that her client is a permanent legal resident with a green and married to an American citizen.
“Initially, we informed us this morning that he was transferred to an ice facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey,” said Ms. Jarir.
“However, when his wife – an American citizen who is pregnant for eight months and was threatened with arrest as well as by ice agents last night – to visit him there today, she was told that he was not being held there.”
She said she was unaware of Mr. Khalil’s current website, although an online detained search on ICE indicates the presence of a Syrian individual named Mahmoud Khalil in the contract detention facility in Elizabeth in New Jersey.
Mrs. Jarir said they heard that Mr. Khalil could be transferred away from Louisiana, without adding details.
The lawyer said that what happened to her customer was “terrible, unjust – and calculated – a mistake.”
During the protests last summer, Mr. Khalil said he was leading negotiations with university directors on behalf of student demonstrators.
They set up a large camp for a tent in the university garden in protest against the Gaza war.
Some students also took control of an academic building for several hours before the police entered the campus to arrest them. Mr. Khalil was not in that group.
He later told the BBC that he was temporarily suspended by the university, as he was a graduate student at the College of International and Public Affairs.
The detention of Mr. Khalil, President Donald Trump’s executive in January, warns anyone involved in the “pro -jihadist protests” and “all Hamas sympathizers on the campus of universities” will be deported.
Some Jewish students in Colombia said that the speech in the demonstrations sometimes crossed the line to anti -Semitism. Other Jewish students on campus joined the protests supporting the Palestinians.
The Trump administration announced last week that it will cancel 400 million dollars (310 million pounds) in federal grants to Colombia, accusing it of failing to fight anti -Semitism on the campus.
“The cancellation of these funds will immediately affect research and other critical functions of the university,” Katrina Armstrong, Colombia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said in a university campus on Friday.
The Israeli army launched its campaign against Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack across the border in Israel on October 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 hostages.
More than 48,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza in the military action of Israel, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
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