JAKARTA - US immigration officers arrested a Palestinian graduate student who was deemed to have played a role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, New York.
Reported by Reuters, Mahmoud Khalil, the campus International and Public Relations student, was arrested by US Department of Homeland Security officers on Saturday night, the Student Workers of Columbia union said.
His wife is a US citizen, eight months pregnant. Khalil holds the green card of a permanent US resident, the union said.
His arrest was condemned by civil rights groups as an attack on freedom of political speech.
In an interview with Reuters hours before his Saturday arrest of Trump's criticism of student protesters, Khalil said he was worried that the government would target him for speaking to the media.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared news reports about Khalil's arrest on social media on Sunday, including comments: "We will revoke visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported."
The US Department of Homeland Security said they arrested Khalil because he had "leaded activities related to Hamas," without elaborating.
US law prohibits providing material or resource support to groups that the US has designated as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist Islamist group that rules Gaza and controls the militant wing of the region.
The law does not define or prohibit "activities associated with" these groups.
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Khalil's detention was one of Trump's first attempts, a Republican who returned to the White House in January, to fulfill his promise to seek deportation of several foreign students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which he called antisemites.
Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023 and US-backed Israeli attacks on Gaza have led to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli protests that have rocked campuses in the US and abroad.
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