Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian protest at the University of Columbia, New York, was arrested by Trump administration agents last week. News Agency Associate Press reported that Donald Trump called his presidential campaign a “free speech”, calling the protests anti -US and “anti -US”.
Donald Trump also said that the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is “one of many people” because he plans to strengthen the crackdown against students workers who protested in favor of Palestine in the United States last year.
An AP report states that Mahmud is a legal US resident and is married to an American, however, he now faces a potential threat to deportation.
Who is Mahmud Khalil?
According to Reuters, Mahmoud Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. He was in the United States since 2022 when he first arrived on a student visa, however, he got a permanent residence in the United States last year.
Before coming to the United States, Mahmud has worked as a social worker in Syria. He finished his high school in the evening and was going to study aviation engineering there. However, the country’s civil war hindered their plans, Mahmud said in an article that he wrote in 2017 for a charity of international education.
“Where will I be, if you like countless other Syrian refugees before me, I can’t get a scholarship, can’t work, or, the worst, can’t leave the evening in the depths of the ongoing war?” He wrote in the article.
He then left for Beirut and began working with a non -profit that helps Syrian children education. He also studied at Lebanese University and received a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science.
This is the case of 2016, when Mahmud was working with non -profit, when he met his wife, Noor Abdullah, when he joined a volunteer program at non -profit. Reuters reports that he became friends and then made a long distance date for seven years. He was married in New York in 2023.
Mahmud also worked as a program manager at the Syrian office at the British Embassy in Beirut, reading his profile page on the Society for International Development website. There, he led the Syrian Shivaning Program, the famous International Scholarship Scheme of the British Government.
Former British diplomat Andrew Waller, who worked with Mahmud at the embassy, ​​told the AP, “You can’t meet a kind or good person to work. He’s thinking. He is intelligent.
Mahmud received a master’s degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in December. He still has to get his degree.
Reuters reports that currently, Mahmud is expecting a child with his wife, a 28 -year -old dentist in New York. They are expecting their baby in April.
“I think it would be very disastrous for me and my first child behind the glass screen … I’ve always been excited to get my first child with this person,” Reuters told Abdul.
