A dozen people were arrested during a Manhattan protest demanding the release of Palestinian activist Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from ICE custody, police said Wednesday.
The 12 protesters were taken into custody as scores of people rallied outside City Hall Park in lower Manhattan Tuesday evening.
Eleven of them were given summonses for disorderly conduct. A 25-year-old man was held overnight pending arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court for obstructing government administration and disorderly conduct, an NYPD spokesman said.
Protesters were demanding the release of Khalil, who remains detained at a processing center in Jena, La., four days after his arrest by plainclothes cops for the Department of Homeland Security at his Columbia-owned apartment in Morningside Heights.
Khalil is a green card holder. His wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, was threatened with arrest if she didn’t leave the scene, according to Khalil’s lawyers.
On Tuesday, the White House doubled down on their decision to detain Khalil, accusing him of organizing protests where Hamas propaganda was distributed.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged Khalil played a role in organizing demonstrations at which flyers were handed out bearing a logo for Hamas, which she did not display.
“Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation’s finest universities,” Leavitt said at a press briefing, declining to provide examples of Khalil’s alleged involvement with the flyers. “He took advantage of that opportunity, of that privilege by siding with terrorists.”
More than a thousand New Yorkers took to the streets Monday over Khalil’s detention.
On Tuesday, some 150 protesters led by Jewish students at Columbia gathered on campus, demanding the school ban federal immigration agents from campus.
“Columbia must commit to protecting its students and their right to free speech,” one protester who declined to share their name said. “We insist that the university immediately institute a policy prohibiting university officials from sharing information about students or staff to ICE or complying with ICE investigations into Columbia students or staff in the absence of a judicial warrant.”
Manhattan Federal Judge Jesse Furman on Monday temporarily slammed the brakes on the student activist’s deportation, saying he could not be removed from the country “unless and until” he orders otherwise.
Furman is expected to render a final decision on the matter Wednesday.
Khalil’s legal team has asked the judge to rule on the lawfulness of his detention and order his return to New York while his immigration matter separately plays out.