By So much for being a family man rather than a full-time protester. A Columbia-educated activist turned cause célèbre for the American left, Mahmoud Khalil walked free from federal detention Friday evening—only to plunge headlong into a firestorm of controversy that reveals far more about the ideological fissures in American politics than about the man himself.
Khalil, 30, a Syrian-born son of Palestinian refugees, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8 amid mounting tensions over the Gaza war. His arrest followed his high-profile involvement in campus protests at Columbia University, where he played a central role in brokering negotiations between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and university officials. Though Khalil denied formal ties to groups like Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), his visibility in the movement and perceived connections to more radical elements made him a convenient target for federal enforcement under the Trump administration’s renewed scrutiny of foreign nationals.
In March 2024, one such group reportedly held a virtual meeting not only to strategize Palestinian solidarity actions, but—more alarmingly—to glorify the highjacking of airplanes.
Mahmoud Khalil is all smiles after an activist judge released him from federal custody pic.twitter.com/aOTt6YVE3Y
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 23, 2025
Liberal advocacy groups had declared his arrest a civil liberties emergency. Editorial pages invoked McCarthyism. And when a federal judge ruled his detention unconstitutional, releasing him on June 20, the moment was met not with quiet relief but with theatrical triumph. A “Welcome Home, Mahmoud” rally was held Sunday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, with radical organizers treating his release less as a legal development than a political resurrection.
Speakers included Professor Rashid Khalidi, vocal critic of Israel, and Manolo De Los Santos of The People’s Forum, a group whose politics skew sharply toward the anti-capitalist and anti-American left. The event’s tone—punctuated by chants of “Viva, viva Palestina!” and statements of solidarity with Iran—struck many observers as less a celebration of individual liberty than a display of ideological defiance.
Indeed, just hours after his release, Khalil appeared outside Columbia once again—this time leading chants at an anti-American demonstration timed conspicuously alongside U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites and a simultaneous anti-Israel rally in Times Square. The optics, critics note, were less than accidental.
Meanwhile, fresh scrutiny is mounting over Khalil’s campus ties in light of a bombshell federal lawsuit filed by American victims of Hamas terror attacks. The plaintiffs, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, accuse Columbia University leaders of fostering an environment that enabled pro-Hamas sentiment to flourish—and name-drop Mahmoud Khalil as emblematic of the university’s radical drift. The suit alleges that Columbia-affiliated groups held virtual events praising terrorists and promoting violence, including discussions that “glorified hijacking airplanes.” While Khalil is not a named defendant, his high-profile presence at such events and his prominence in anti-Israel organizing make him an unignorable figure in the narrative. The litigation marks a significant turn, reframing the Columbia protests not merely as campus unrest, but as potential incubators for material support of terrorism.
https://twitter.com/RepWPH/status/1937128080981500304
Far from a victim of injustice, Khalil’s return to the spotlight exposes the performative nature of his martyrdom—and the left’s dangerous willingness to sanctify radicals every time.
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