ICE Arrests Palestinian Ringleader
Following through on his promise to pull funding from “any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” President Trump has cancelled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University over its “continued inaction” in the face of continued bullying and harassment of Jewish students.
“Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
“For too long, Columbia has abandoned its obligation to its Jewish students. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer,” McMahon asserted.
Leo Terrell, the senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, detailed on a Fox News show the Trump administration’s resolve to “eradicate” antisemitism on campus.
“I want everyone out there committing these horrific acts against the Jewish American community, I want you to be aware, this task force under the leadership of President Trump, Attorney General Bondi and with the assistance of Secretary McMahon—we’re going to use every tool to eradicate this plague,” Terrell said.
“This is going to stop. We have a ten-campus tour up ahead, where we’re going to read these so-called trustees the riot act. And tell them, protect American students like you protect all Americans or else we will take every appropriate step to stop it for you.”
“Let me be clear to all those individuals who are defending this individual (a Palestinian arrested for stoking antisemitism): “A student visa is a privilege not a right. You are not an American citizen, you’re a foreign national. I’m telling all of these individuals: yes, you will get your day in court before an immigration judge, but your visa can be revoked,” senior counsel Terrell said.
“I want these individuals who are practicing antisemitic behavior to know: if you are an individual on a student visa, you can expect deportation proceedings or revocation of your right to attend a prestigious university in the great country of America.”
Pro-Hamas Agitators Push the Needle Higher
The fund slashing at Columbia came just a few days after four federal agencies—the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice (DOJ), Education (DoE) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)—announced the initiation of a “comprehensive review” of federal grants to Columbia.
The agencies cited the investigation by President Trump’s newly formed “Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” into whether Columbia violated anti-discrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act with its chronic inaction on the harassment of Jewish students.
These Task Force’s review came on the heels of a raucous anti-Israel takeover of Barnard College’s Library by two hundred students last week. When the police were called in, the mob refused to vacate and resisted law enforcement, screaming slurs and foul language.
With the arrest of 9 of the rioters, it emerged that not one of the agitators was from Barnard; all of them came from other universities, including Columbia, reported Fox News.
This riot and takeover of a university building followed an earlier one the previous week, where masked rioters stormed Barnard’s Milstein Hall, vandalizing the building, shouting hateful anti-Israel rhetoric and holding Dean Grinage hostage for six hours. A university employee was assaulted by the lawbreakers and had to be hospitalized.
The administration’s response was to attempt to appease the agitators in drawn-out negotiations over six hours.
When no arrests, suspensions or expulsions followed this outrage, the rioters were apparently emboldened to push the needle higher, stoking greater chaos with a crowd five to ten times as big as they stormed the Barnard Library just a few days later.
Unprecedented Smack Down
Less than a week after the library takeover, Columbia faced an unprecedented smack down from President Trump for its policy of inaction in the face of brazen, orchestrated antisemitic incitement.
The newly organized Task Force produced a trove of evidence that anti-discrimination laws at Columbia had been trampled, prompting the canceling of hundreds of millions in federal funds, with millions more on the chopping block.
“The Task Force is continuing to review and coordinate across federal agencies to identify additional cancellations that could be made swiftly,” reported GSA (Government Services Agency) on its website, adding that “Columbia University currently holds more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments.”
The Education Department announced last week that it is committed to addressing a backlog of complaints about alleged Jew-hatred that went unaddressed during the Biden administration.
In line with this undertaking, the department sent notices to 60 universities warning that they too could face consequences if they fail to meet their obligations, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, to protect Jewish college students from harassment.
Six of the eight Ivy League universities—Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia—were among those notified. Among the other 54 schools are prominent institutions including Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, the State University of New York, The Ohio State University, the University of California (including Berkeley) and Arizona State University.
The four federal agencies warned they would take actions against these institutions similar to those imposed on Columbia, if allegations that their leaders have allowed rampant antisemitism to flourish are confirmed.
“The decisive action by the DOJ, HHS, ED, and GSA to cancel Columbia’s grants and contracts serves as a notice to every school and university that receives federal dollars, that this Administration will use all the tools at its disposal to protect Jewish students and end antisemitism on college campuses,” the agencies said in a joint statement.
Senate Judiciary Demands DOJ Trace Sources of Antisemitic Funding
A Senate Judiciary Committee titled, “Never to Be Silent: Stemming the Tide of Antisemitism in America,” heard testimony from a Muslim journalist last Wednesday who warned that antisemitism has become an “industry” in the United States, and called for the Justice Department to investigate the “malign foreign influence” behind it.
“Antisemitism is now an industry that is being perpetuated by organizations that even have nonprofit status in America – 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s,” Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the founder of the Pearl Project, told Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
“These are organizations that use opposition to Israel to perpetuate their hate. October 7th became their moment. And pulling our punches and not recognizing their danger in our society serves no one,” Nomani said. “The level of hate that we have right now against our Jewish community is of epidemic proportions.”
The Muslim journalist told the committee that she has spent 22 years investigating radical Islamic networks that span the globe. “We call them agitators, we call them protesters, but they have names,” she said. “They are from organizations that are part of a network that I have numbered now at 1,500 branches. This is not a grassroots organization.”
Nomani held up posters seen at recent anti-Israel protests and at the Democratic National Convention disseminated by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a radical group that calls for violence against Israel and support for Hamas.
She said the person charged with spraying graffiti that read “HAMAS IS COMING” on the Christopher Columbus statue in Washington, D.C., during protests against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit last July, was “not just an agitator” but a senior official in AMP.
“This man is the Richmond Director of American Muslims for Palestine,” Nomani said.
“The hate that killed Danny Pearl (Nomani’s fellow WSJ reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2005 by radical Muslims) on the streets of Karachi is now in our streets. It’s on our campuses. It’s a frightening network of the far left and Islamist groups,” she said.
“Nobody in this room can support their ideals. They want to destroy the United States of America. They want to destroy Israel. And our young Jewish students on campuses, our younger “Danny’s,” are in their crosshairs.”
Nomani called on the Committee to “recognize the vast network of malign foreign influence as an existential threat. They must be diligently investigated; they are doing the bidding of malign foreign actors that want to destroy America.”
Sen. Ted Cruz: Follow the Money
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas then addressed the mystery of who is funding the antisemitic protests in the U.S., demanding a Justice Department investigation.
“Is it clear that there is significant money funding these attacks on Jewish students and attacks on America?” Cruz asked Dr. Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights.
“It is clear that there is coordination and there must be some common funding,” Lewin responded.
Sen. Cruz made the point with further questioning that the Biden Justice Department took no action to follow the money behind what appears to be nationally orchestrated antisemitic campus activity,
In Cruz’s words, “the Biden administration did absolutely nothing about the horror unfolding on American campuses.”
Addressing the “free speech” argument that universities hide behind in defending Jew-hating rhetoric, Cruz noted the hypocrisy in using that defense.
These schools would never bring up the free speech excuse, he said, if students dared to impersonate Ku Klux Klan members—the notorious racist group who once terrorized black people. Students seeking to harass black students would be swiftly punished.
The same treatment should be meted out to people who bully and intimidate Jews, Sen. Cruz insisted.
“They should expel these ringleaders [who foment antisemitism],” he blazed. “If they’re foreign students, they should be deported. And, mark my words, you will see the Trump Department of Justice follow the money, prosecute the people who are paying for this, prosecute those engaged in violence, and cut off the money from universities that are tolerating and celebrating this outrage.”
“That,” he said, “is the rule of law.”
Sen. Kennedy: ‘Didn’t You See What I Saw?’
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., used his time at the hearing to castigate Columbia for promoting antisemitism and to praise the administration’s crackdown on the university by withholding federal funds.
When one of the witnesses he was questioning complained that the Civil Rights division of the Education Department would be unable to continue “investigating” antisemitism at American colleges if President Trump closed the Department, Sen. Kennedy shot back, “What is there to investigate? Don’t you watch television, didn’t you see what I saw?”
“I saw that Columbia’s administration and most of its faculty believe passionately in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion—and the right to hurt Jews!” Kennedy went on, as applause broke out. “Didn’t you see that?”
“This is the situation not just at Columbia,” the senator added. “It’s at UCLA, Berkley, Barnard and many Ivy League schools.” He singled out Vanderbilt, Chicago and Toulane universities as notable exceptions to the prevailing trend on college campuses where antisemitism has become deeply embedded.
Kennedy highlighted Columbia’s historical antisemitism—“There was a time when they didn’t allow any Jews at their university,”—and now hatred of Jews has been normalized under the Biden administration’s DEI program.
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Palestinian Ringleader Arrested For Fomenting Antisemitism
ICE officials, acting on a State Department order, arrested notorious Palestinian agitator Mahmoud Khalil two days after the Trump Administration stripped $400 million in federal grants from Columbia.
In revoking Khalil’s visa and green card and holding him behind bars awaiting deportation proceedings, Trump delivered on another campaign pledge: to deport or imprison foreign agitators inciting anti-Israel demonstrations on American campuses.
Khalil drew government scrutiny as a ringleader of violent anti-Israel riots at Columbia and Barnard College earlier this month, where he called for the destruction of Israel and the “total eradication of Western Civilization.”
He was also one of key architects of the rabid anti-Israel tent encampments on campuses across the country last year, reports the NY Post. In April 2024, a video surfaced of Khalil and a colleague expressing violent and hateful rhetoric towards Jews comparing them to Nazis, saying “they shouldn’t be allowed to live in this world.”
Khalil told a Post reporter during September’s raucous protests that anti-Israel organizers would continue to resist despite efforts to tamp them down. He promised to ramp up the rioters’ actions, including establishing future encampments.
“As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” Khalil vowed. “Not only protests and encampments, the sky is the limit!”
Video footage shows Khalil—a non-citizen of Syrian-Palestinian origin—with a megaphone issuing the mob’s “demands,” and slamming the university for not acquiescing to them. The video clips showcase the man’s arrogance as he defies the administration’s orders to vacate the building, confident he can continue to victimize Jewish students on behalf of Hamas with impunity.
ICE agents arrested Khalil in his apartment near Columbia, taking him into custody for fomenting chaos on university campuses.
He is currently being held at the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana after being transferred from New Jersey. A judge has temporarily halted his deportation pending court proceedings this coming week.
Merely the First Salvo
President Trump signaled that Khalil’s arrest is merely the first salvo in a sweeping initiative targeting students and others involved in what he calls “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity” on college campuses nationwide.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on his online site, Truth Social. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he continued.
The President also addressed outside agitators, warning that “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Legal observers expect the Trump administration will likely face a long legal battle before actually expelling Khalil from the United States. Woke ideologues, advocacy groups and left-wing Democrats—with Jewish Jerry Nadler, D-NY taking the lead—have rushed to make a martyr out of the Palestinian agitator, claiming he is being “deprived of his free speech rights.”
The secretary of state, however, enjoys broad powers over visas under Section 221(i) of the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, empowering him to strip visas from foreigners deemed a threat to individual or national security.
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‘Catch And Revoke’ Will Target Foreign Visitor who Support Terrorists
The State Department is reportedly embarking on an “artificial intelligence-powered initiative” to spot foreigners in the United States who are supportive of Hamas or other terror organizations, and revoke their visas, a NY Post article reported.
Dubbed “Catch and Revoke,” the program will use AI tools to enable officials to pore through the social media accounts of foreign student visa-holders, looking for evidence of sympathy for Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 massacres, the article said.
“Those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared last week. “Violators of US law — including international students — face visa denial or revocation, and deportation.”
Authorities will also comb government databases to see whether the Biden administration permitted any visa holders who were arrested to remain within the country, the report detailed.
The report followed President Trump’s announcement last week that all federal funds will cease for institutions of higher education that permit “illegal protests.”
“Agitators will be imprisoned/ or permanently sent back to the country from which they came,” he posted online. “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
Rubio, 53, enjoys broad powers under visas under Section 221(i) of the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952 to strip visas from foreigners considered to be a threat. As a senator under the Biden administration, Rubio had advocated revoking visas in response to the surge in antisemitism across the country in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
Almost as soon as he took office, Trump had ordered federal agencies to flag “all civil and criminal authorities” under their jurisdiction to combat antisemitism. The executive order specifically called for visas to be revoked against foreign students who violated the law during the anti-Israel eruptions that were orchestrated on campuses nationwide last year.
“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump declared in the executive order.
Although Democrats are hyperventilating about “free speech” concerns, scores of Republicans in Congress and millions of Americans have cheered Trump’s push to crack down on antisemitism on campuses.
“We finally have a president who has a moral clarity about what freedom in America is all about,” House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich, told the NY Post.
