New York (AP)-The White House complained on Tuesday that Columbia University refused to lend a hand federal agents find people who are sought as part of the government’s efforts to deport the participants in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, since the government continued to punish school by wearing federal research dollar.
On Saturday, agents of the immigration authorities arrested and arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US and Palestinian activist who played an outstanding role in protests in Columbia last year. He is now pending with a possible deportation.
President Donald Trump swore additional arrests. In a briefing with reporters in Washington, Karoline Leavitt, press spokeswoman for the White House, said that the federal authorities used “intelligence” to identify other people who are involved in campus demonstrations who are critical of the administration as an anti-Semitic and “pro-Hamas”.
She said Columbia received names and refused to lend a hand the Ministry of Homeland Security “identify these people on campus”.
“As the president said very strongly yesterday in his explanation, he won’t tolerate that,” said Leavitt.
A spokesman for Columbia University did not respond directly to a message in which the administration’s answer was obtained, but referred the Associated Press to a letter that was sent to students by Interim President Katrina Armstrong on Monday.
“We will follow the law, as it was always the case, and rumors that a member of the Columbia Leadership demanded the presence of the US immigration and customs authority (ICE) on the or near campus,” says the letter.
Last week, the Trump government announced that it achieved 400 million US dollars in grants and contracts of Colombia and accused the school not to stop anti -Semitism on campus. As part of these cuts, the National Institutes of Health was reduced more than 250 million US dollars in financial resources, including more than 400 grants.
X. Edward Guo, director of the Bone -Bioengineering laboratory from Columbia, published a screenshot about X of an e -e -mail, which he notified that one of his NIH prices had been canceled. “We understand that this may be shocking news,” says the e -mail.
Last spring, the university was crowned by great demonstrations by students who recognize an end to Israeli military campaign in Gaza and recognition of human rights and territorial demands of the Palestinians. Ultimately, the university called the police to dismantle a protest camp and end an administrative building.
The 30 -year -old Khalil had been a spokesman for the demonstrators. He was not accused of crimes, but Leavitt said that the government had postponed him in accordance with a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the Foreign Minister the authority to deport a non-State citizen if the government has “reasonable reasons” that the presence of the person could have “serious negative foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
By Tuesday, Khalil was recorded in an immigration finding center in Louisiana.
Civil rights groups and the lawyers of Khalil say that the government uses its immigration control powers unconstitutionally to prevent him from commenting. A federal judge stated a hearing for Wednesday and ordered the government not to deport it in the meantime.
Trump, a Republican, has proposed that some demonstrators support Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people. According to Israel, there were more than 17,000 militants.
Trump announced Khalil’s arrest as the first “many to come” and swore to deport students on social media, which the president described as “proterrorist, anti -Semitic, anti -American activity”.
Immigration officers also tried to arrest another international student in Columbia, but they were not allowed to go to an apartment in which, according to a union, she represented the student.
Khalil, who ended his demands on a master’s degree in Columbia in December, and protest leader said they were anti-war, not anti-Semitic. They find that some Jewish students and groups have joined the demonstrations. A disciplinary authority in Columbia recently said that he had examined whether he had violated a modern nuisance policy by describing a school officer as a “genocide”.
Leavitt in detail not specific misconduct from Khalil. But she said that he organized protests that disturbed the lessons, harassed Jewish students and “propaganda from Pro-Hamas, distributed leaflets with the Hamas logo”.
Khalil was born in Syria and is a grandson of the Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyers said in a legal registration. It was not about his citizenship, but said that his relatives were newly driven out in Syria’s civil war and are now in other countries.
Khalil is married to a US citizen who is expecting her first child.
“For everyone who read this, I ask you to see Mahmoud as a loving husband and future father of our baby through my eyes.
