Two days before the arrest by American agents Mahmoud Khalil, a student of Columbia University and Palestinian activist asked his wife if she knew what to do, whether immigration agents came to their door.
Noor Abdalla, Khalila's wife for over two years, said she was confused. As a legal permanent resident of the USA, Khalil certainly did not have to worry about it, he remembers him.
“I didn't take him seriously. Apparently I was naive ”, Abdalla, a US citizen who is in eight months of pregnancy, told Reuters in her first media interview.
Agents of the US Department of Internal Security Room in the handcuff of her husband on Saturday at the lobby of his university residential building in Manhattan. The arrest of Khalil is one of the first efforts of President Donald Trump, a republican who returned to the White House in January to fulfill his promise to apply for the deportation of some foreign students involved in a pro-Palestinian protest movement.
Earlier on Wednesday, Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist in New York, sat in the first place in the courtroom in Manhattan, when Khalila's lawyers argued to the federal judge that he was arrested with retaliation for his open support against Israeli military assault on gauze for gauze after the military group of Hamas. They told the judge that Khalil was a violation of constitutional rights to freedom of speech.
The judge extended his order by blocking Khalil's deportation, while he is considering whether the arrest was constitutional.
Trump without evidence said that 30 -year -old Khalil promoted Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group that rules gauze. His administration said that Khalil is not accused or accused of crime, but Trump claims that his presence in the US is “contrary to the interests of domestic and foreign policy.”
Mahmoud Khalil, a student of the University of Columbia in the country, was arrested by American immigration agents and is in the face of possible deportation for involvement in pro-Falestinian protests. This is one of the first known arrests related to the threats of Trump's administration towards student activists.
On Sunday, Trump's administration moved Khalil from an American immigration and customs prison in Elizabeth, Nj, near Manhattan, to prison at the village of Jen, Louisiana, about 2000 kilometers away.
Abdalla and Khalil met in Lebanon in 2016, when she joined the volunteer program Khalil supervised the non-profit group, which provides educational scholarships for Syrian youth. As friends before a seven -year -old relationship at long distances, they led to their wedding in New York in 2023.
“He is the most amazing person who cares about other people so much,” she said. “He is the most kind, real soul.”
The couple expect their first child at the end of April. She said she hoped that Khalil would be free by that time. She showed Reuters a photo of a recent sonogram: a boy whose name they have not yet chosen.
“I think it would be very destructive to me and meeting the first child behind the glass screen,” said Abdalla, adding that Khalil insisted on all cooking, washing and cleaning through pregnancy. “I have always been so excited that I have my first child with the person I love.”
The government said that he began proceedings regarding the deportation of Khalil and by that time he defended his detention in court proceedings.
Trump called the anti-Semitic protest movement and said that Khalil “is the first arrest of many.”
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and came to the USA for a student visa in 2022, staying last year his permanent residence card. In December he graduated from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, but he has not yet received a diploma.
He became a loud member of the Ivy League Student University Protestant Movement, often talking to the media as one of the main negotiators with Columbia administration regarding many years of demands to make training investments in the amount of $ 14.8 billion in weapons producers and other companies supporting the Israeli government.
According to Israel, over 1,200 people were killed in Israel in Hamas, in which 251 hostages were taken to Gaza to Gaza. Since then, Israel's attacks have killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza, although Tally is probably much higher because over 10,000 people were lost and considered to be lost under the rubble.
The Trump administration claims that pro-Palestinian protests at university campus, including in Columbia, included support for Hamas, which the US appointed as a terrorist organization and anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students. The organizers of student protests claim that Israel's criticism is wrongly combined with anti -Semitism.
Jewish lecturers in Columbia organized a rally and press conference on Monday to Khalil in front of the university building, holding the signs saying: “Jews say” no “.
But Abdalla said that no one in Colombia's administration contacted her to offer help, which she considered frustrating.
She said that her husband focused on supporting his community through spokeswoman and more direct. She had several short telephone calls with Khalil from prison, where he told her that he helped other detained migrants with poor English filling forms saved in legends and passing food to his colleagues from prison, bought from his Account Commissioner.
“Mahmoud is a Palestinian and was always interested in Palestinian policy,” she said. “He stands behind his people, he fights for his people.”
Abdalla suddenly ended Wednesday's interview when she saw Khalil calling her from prison.
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The arrest and endangered deportation of a student activist at Columbia University is a threat to freedom of speech in the campus and in the whole US, professor and representative of the union of the department Michael Thadeus says how this happens the host Nil Kӧksal.