You haven’t heard much from anti-Israel campus agitator Mahmoud Khalil lately, and there may be a reason for that. He wants to stay in the U. S., and this time around a tad less visibility helps him. Not that he’s become a wallflower. He’s just more selective in where he shows up right now. Given all that happens and is forgotten from one news cycle to the next, here’s a little refresher on the ungrateful non-American who made his name last year preaching hate on the campus of Columbia University. On March 8 of this year, U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil at his New York City apartment, and then took him to a detention center in Louisiana as part of the formal deportation process. Kahlil is not an American citizen. He was born in the mid-1990s at a refugee camp in Syria. His parents are described as Palestinian and Algerian, so he has citizenship in Algeria. Before coming to America, he had earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, and then applied for admission into Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In December of 2024, he received his master of public administration degree. According to all reports, he is a green-card holder and thus a legal resident of the United States who also happens to be married to a U. S. citizen. So far, he’s been careful to check all of the boxes, right? In the spring of 2024, a few months before he graduated from Columbia, those inorganic “pro-Palestine protests” started to erupt almost simultaneously on campuses across the country. Columbia became the site of some of the most contentious activity, and Kahlil was at the heart of it all. In April of that year, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” set itself up on the East Butler Lawn and refused to budge. On April 29, an intimidating group of students, and possibly some non-students, occupied Hamilton Hall on campus. They stayed there for 24 hours until New York City police cleared them out.
