Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside his campus housing in March 2024, marking one of the first high-profile enforcement actions targeting international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism.
His arrest followed weeks of sustained protests at Columbia and other universities demanding divestment from Israel and an end to U.S. Military support for Gaza, actions university administrators characterized as violating campus policies on harassment and disruption. Khalil, a Palestinian refugee from Syria holding a student visa, was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana without prior warning to his legal counsel or university officials.
Internal emails obtained by MERIP reveal that Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity coordinated with the New York Police Department’s intelligence division in the days preceding Khalil’s detention, sharing protest participant lists and social media monitoring reports under the guise of threat assessment protocols. The university has not denied the exchange but stated it was conducted in accordance with its duty to ensure campus safety.
Similar patterns emerged at the University of Texas at Austin, where Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Fulbright scholar, was seized by ICE agents in April 2024 after participating in a sit-in at the university’s administrative building. Her detention, which lasted 17 days, coincided with a state-led investigation into foreign funding of student organizations, initiated by Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office following legislative hearings on “foreign influence” in higher education.
University of Texas administrators declined to intervene publicly, citing federal jurisdiction over immigration enforcement, while privately advising international students to avoid protests that could jeopardize their visa status. Internal guidance distributed to faculty in March 2024 warned that expressions of solidarity with Palestinians could be construed as material support for terrorism under Section 2339B of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a legal interpretation later retracted by the Department of Justice in May 2024 after widespread academic criticism.
By June 2024, over 300 international student visas had been revoked or denied renewal across 47 institutions, according to data compiled by the National Immigration Law Center from Freedom of Information Act requests. The revocations disproportionately affected students from Muslim-majority countries engaged in Palestine-related activism, though officials maintained the actions were based on individual immigration violations unrelated to speech.
Federal court filings in the Southern District of New York show that at least 12 visa revocations cited participation in campus protests as a contributing factor in discretionary decisions under Section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows consular officers to deny visas pending additional administrative processing. In none of these cases were criminal charges filed against the students.
University legal teams have increasingly invoked the concept of “time, place, and manner” restrictions to justify disciplinary actions against pro-Palestinian student groups, arguing that encampments and sit-ins disrupt academic operations regardless of message content. At the University of California, Berkeley, administrators suspended the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for 90 days in February 2024, citing unauthorized use of plazas and amplified sound, despite similar penalties not being applied to pro-Israel groups holding rallies in the same spaces.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of Khalil, Öztürk, and seven other students, alleging violations of First Amendment rights and due process under the Fifth Amendment. The Department of Justice has moved to dismiss the cases, asserting that immigration enforcement decisions are unreviewable by federal courts under the plenary power doctrine.
As of April 2025, no university has publicly reversed a disciplinary sanction or visa-related action taken against a student for pro-Palestinian activism since October 2023, despite ongoing legal challenges and internal faculty votes of no confidence in administrations at Columbia, Texas, and Berkeley. The chilling effect persists, with student organizations reporting a 70% decline in protest participation compared to the same period in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Arab American Association of New York in March 2025.