NEW YORK CITY, NY — The drama surrounding the arrest and attempt to deport Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, and other human rights activists at Columbia, by the Trump administration continued here last week, according to the New York Times.
Now, seven unnamed current students from campus “asked a federal court last Thursday to block the school from producing student disciplinary records to a House committee that demanded them last month,” wrote the N.Y. Times.
According to school records, Khalil is a holder of a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in Dec. 2024, is married to an American and has a Green Card, said the Times.
But the White House maintains, “Mr. Khalil is only the first of many whom it plans to detain and deport,” reported the Times.
“The committee’s request and the school’s compliance with it would violate the First Amendment rights of Mr. Khalil and the students and the university’s obligation to protect student privacy,” wrote N.Y. Times, citing the lawsuit.
Rep. Tim Walberg, Republican House committee chairman, was one of the key figures named in the lawsuit, added the NY Times, noting the name of Columbia’s interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, would “change nothing” in Walberg’s view after both representatives from Columbia University and Barnard College did not comment, reported by Times.
“Our committee will continue its work to protect Jewish students and hold schools accountable for their failures to address rampant antisemitism on our college campuses,” Walberg said in a statement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “talking to reporters during a stop in Ireland on Wednesday,” according to NY Times, accused Mr. Khalil of “participating in antisemitic activities.”
“This is not about free speech,” Rubio stated. “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.”
Last month, “numerous antisemitic incidents” had taken place related to the campus, according to a letter the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent to Dr. Armstrong and other university board chairs.
The letter demanded disciplinary records connected to “11 incidents dating to the previous school year, including the student ‘takeover and occupation’ of Hamilton Hall last April,” citing as “a protest against a class taught by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the disruption of an Israeli history class,” reported the NY Times.
The Times reported Columbia would “have to turn over private files of hundreds of its students, faculty and staff members,” and the requests for student information and the hearings for “campus antisemitism” has led to resignations of university presidents and showcased a “naked attempt to attack and harass individuals who expressed viewpoints critical of Israel.”
Khalil was arrested March 8 by federal immigration agents in New York, now being held in Louisiana as a “prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus,” according to NY Times.
“He has not been charged with any crime,” added the Times. “But the Trump administration has accused Mr. Khalil of siding with terrorists and justified his detention by citing a little-used statute that allows the secretary of state to deport anyone whose presence is adversarial to foreign policy and national security interests.”
The seven current students in Columbia requested the court to allow them to “proceed anonymously” and be “referred to in the lawsuit with pseudonyms like Sally Roe and Ned Noe.”
Ultimately, “such information could be used to harass and make threats against the individuals,” the Times added, emphasizing their “personal privacy and safety would be jeopardized by the committee’s politically charged investigation,” citing the suit.
