The wife of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist who faces deportation, says she was “naive” to think that her husband wouldn’t be detained by immigration agents.
In her first public comments since her Syrian-born husband’s detention Saturday, Noor Abdalla told Reuters on Thursday that just two days before his arrest, Khalil had asked her if she knew what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers came to the door.
“I didn’t take him seriously. Clearly I was naive,” said Abdalla, who is a U.S. citizen and pregnant with the couple’s first child due next month.
Khalil, a 30-year-old with a green card, played a major role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year. Those protests helped the spread of similar action on campuses across the country.
According to a document seen by NBC News, President Donald Trump’s administration has said Khalil is “subject to removal from the United States.”
“The Secretary of State has determined that your presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” that document said.
Noor Abdalla, 28, holding an ultrasound scan in New York City, on Wednesday.Caitlin Ochs / Reuters
Abdalla told Reuters that the couple met in Lebanon in 2016 when she volunteered for a nonprofit providing educational scholarships to Syrian youngsters. The outlet reported that their relationship was long-distance until they married in 2023.
She spoke of the heartache of Khalil’s legal troubles while they expect their first child.
“I think it would be very devastating for me and for him to meet his first child behind a glass screen,” she said.
Khalil was arrested Saturday in the lobby of the university-owned apartment building in Manhattan, before being taken to a facility in New Jersey, and then to Louisiana.
An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria; he arrived in the United States on a student visa in 2022 and gained his green card two years later.
Khalil is now a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and his arrest represents the Trump administration’s efforts to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protests in universities and deport ringleaders.
Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist, attended a New York courtroom Wednesday where Khalil’s lawyers argued that his detention and possible deportation was a violation of his constitutional free speech rights, Reuters reported.
The detention order was extended while the court considers the legality of the arrest.
A federal judge temporarily blocked Khalil from being deported Monday, saying he will remain in the United States as the court weighs the challenge to his arrest and detention.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week that Khalil “organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, fliers with the logo of Hamas.”
Abdalla told Reuters: “Mahmoud is Palestinian and he’s always been interested in Palestinian politics. He’s standing up for his people, he’s fighting for his people.”
Attorney Amy Greer, who is representing Khalil, told NBC’s “Top Story with Tom Llamas” on Wednesday night that the arrest was a clear constitutional violation.
“This is not what we’re used to in this country, and it is directly counter to our Constitution that people should just be taken, not heard from again, moved halfway across the country without anybody knowing why or where or how or what the justification is,” she said, adding that he he had not communication with Hamas.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon this week wrote to 60 colleges, including Columbia, warning them of legal action if they failed to clamp down on antisemitism on campus, which Jewish groups had complained was a feature of some protests last year.
Protests this week, including from Jewish student groups, have called for Khalil’s immediate release.
