The beginning of the battle of US President Donald Trump with elite universities has passed several days when federal immigration officials arrested the Palestinian student Mahmud Halil in his residence at the Columbia University, in New York, March.
For more than three months, he was put into the detention for immigrants in the rural area of Louisiana, while the Trump administration entered its battle and arrested other foreign students supporting Palestinians and canceled billions of dollars in studies dedicated to the universities of Colombia and Barvard and other private educational institutions that were witnessing the movement of student protests, supporting Paleria. Activists in it.
The 30 -year -old Khalil said: “I never regret to resist the genocide,” reports the Reuters news agency.
He stated this in an interview with his apartment in Manhattan, less than two weeks after a court order was issued, which will be issued on bail in anticipation of the completion of the procedures for canceling permanent legal residence received in the United States, in order to deport it.
He added: “I do not regret the protection of the right, that is, to confront the war and call for the cessation of violence.”
It is believed that the government is trying to force him to shut up, but instead gave him a wider platform.
Upon his return to New York, after his release, he received him at the airport of Alexandria Okasio Cortes, the political opponent of Trump. He waved his supporters Palestinian flags, while he met with his wife and baby, who was not present at his birth from his detention.
Two days later, a rally star on a cathedral staircase near the Columbia campus in Manhattan, where he criticized university officials.
Last week, he appeared in front of the crowded crowds along with the Mamdani Zahran, supporting the deputy Palestinians in the state, who won the preliminary elections of the Democratic Party in June, before the municipality in New York for 2025.
Khalil said: “I did not decide to be in this situation, but rather an agency, ensuring the observance of American immigration and customs laws … This, of course, had a great influence on my life. I’m still frankly trying to reflect on my new realistic. ”
He could not attend his graduation ceremony in May, and he went out of the detention, unemployed. He said that the international charitable organization revoked its proposal to work as a political consultant.
The government can get its appeal and keep it again, so Halil said that his priority was to spend as long as possible with his son and his wife, dentist.
Khalil was born in the Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, and his doctor, Dr. Nur Abdullah, an American citizen. Halil won a permanent residence in the United States last year.
He moved to New York in 2022 as a graduate student, and he became one of the main participants in the negotiations between the University of Colombia and the protesters who were held in the campus park, and demanded the end of investment in the company for the production of weapons and other support of the Israeli army.
Khalil is not accused of any crimes, but the US government was based on a free immigration law in order to advance the need for its deportation and a number of other foreign students who support the Palestinians, claiming that their “legal but controversial” discourse can harm the interests of American foreign policy.
The federal judge, who considers the case, decided that the main logical basis of the administration of Trump of Khalil, is probably an unconstitutional violation of the freedom of expression. The government of appeal.
“This is not a matter of freedom of expression of opinions, but rather people who do not have the right to exist in the United States to support terrorists (Hamas) and organize mass protests who made universities unsafe and persecuted Jewish students,” said Aibil Jackson, a press secretary of the White House, in response to requests.
The purpose of the policy of the University of Colombia
In an interview, Khalil condemned the pretext of anti -Semitism, and Jewish students called them a “integral part” of the protest movement. He said that the government uses “anti -Semitism” as an argument for the re -interpx of American higher education, that Trump said that ideology is hostile to America, Marxism and the control of “radical left”.
The Trump administration informed the University of Colombia and others that the funds of federal scholarships, most of which are intended for biomedical research, will not be resumed unless the government has the greatest observation of those who accept and use, and what they study, calling for “greater intellectual diversity”.
Unlike Harvard, the University of Colombia did not hit the sudden abolition of the government and agreed with some requirements of the Trump administration to tighten the rules related to protests, as a condition for a preliminary refusal to resume funding.
Khalil described the steps of Columbia University as amazing. He said: “Colombia mainly transferred the institution of the Trump administration and allowed him to intervene in all the details related to how to manage higher educational institutions.”
The Administration of the University of Colombia said that maintaining academic independence is a “red line”, since negotiations are ongoing.
The press secretary of Colombia Virginia Lam Padiy said that officials of the University of “decisively against Khalil’s description.
In her statement, she added: “The University of Colombia recognizes the right of students, including Halil, publicly telling about the problems that they strongly believe in … But it is also important for the university to observe its rules and politics so that everyone at the university can participate in the university society free of discrimination and persecution.”
Khalil, Colombia and other universities on which Trump is pursuing, they called to take care of their students.
He said: “Students presented a clear plan about how this campus can follow human rights and international law, and include all students, since everyone feels equal, regardless of their positions on issues … They prefer to surrender to political pressure, and not listen to students.
