Khalil has claimed ‘we couldn’t avoid’ Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and said it’s ‘very racist to ask a Palestinian’ to condemn the terror group
The Board of Immigration Appeals denied anti-Israel activist and Columbia University agitator Mahmoud Khalil’s attempt to halt his deportation, issuing a final order of removal on Thursday, according to his lawyers. The move marks a victory for the Trump administration in its efforts to deport the Syrian native and Algerian national.
Khalil called the board’s decision “biased and politically motivated” in a statement, insisting that the Trump administration “has weaponized the immigration system to punish” him. The former Columbia student, however, was found to have “willfully misrepresented” his campus activism and work for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency—which the Trump administration has considered sanctioning over its ties to Hamas—at the time of his green card application, according to a ruling from an immigration judge in September. Khalil’s lawyers maintain that he cannot be detained or deported until his federal court case is adjudicated. In January, a U.S. appeals panel ruled that Khalil is required to go through immigration courts before he’s able to challenge the decision in federal court.
Khalil has made a series of inflammatory remarks since he entered the public spotlight. At an illegal March 2025 protest where activists distributed Hamas propaganda, Khalil told reporters that he and his Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) organization would push the university to divest from Israel by “any available means necessary.”
He insisted that “it’s very racist to ask a Palestinian” to condemn the terror outfit during an appearance at the South by Southwest festival last month when a moderator asked him why he told CNN it was “disingenuous and absurd” to ask him to do so in an earlier interview.
Khalil has offered repeated justifications for Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, telling New York Times columnist Ezra Klein in August that “we couldn’t avoid such a moment,” insisting that Hamas did so “to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard.” Most recently, he told the Forward, “I wouldn’t rule out that Hamas targeted civilians, but I wouldn’t confirm it either.”
In June 2025, the 31-year-old told ABC News that the rise of anti-Semitism and attacks against Jews in the United States is a “direct result of … U.S. unconditional support to Israel,” adding that the attacks are “desperate attempts to be heard.”
At the outset of Operation Epic Fury, CUAD, for which Khalil negotiated during Columbia’s encampments, posted “marg bar amrika” to X, an Islamic Republic slogan that translates to “Death to America.”
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) has embraced the student activist, playing host to Khalil for dinner at Gracie Mansion last month and referring to him as “a New Yorker” who “belongs in New York City.”
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