The wife of Colombia University student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who faced deportation, says she was “bid” thinking that her husband would not be detained by immigration agents.
In his first public comments after the husband’s detention in the evening on Saturday, Noor Abdullah said Reuters Just two days before his arrest on Thursday, Khalil asked her if she knows what to do if immigration and customs enforcement officers come to the door.
“I didn’t take it seriously. Clearly I said,” Abdullah, an American citizen and is pregnant with the first child of the next month.
Khalil, 30, a green card, played a vital role in the Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year. These protests helped spread similar action on campus across the country.
According to a document appearing by NBC News, President Donald Trump’s administration has said that Khalil is “subject to the removal of the United States.”
The document states that “the Secretary of State has vowed that your presence or activities in the United States will have serious negative consequences for foreign policy for the United States.”
Abdullah told Reuters that the couple met in Lebanon in 2016 when it volunteered for a non -profit -paying person who provided educational scholarships to Syrian youths. Outlet said his relationship was long distance until he married in 2023.
He talked about the heartache of Khalil’s legal problems while he expects his first child.
“I think it would be very disastrous for me and for him to meet his first child behind the glass screen,” he said.
Khalil was arrested in the lobby of a university -owned apartment in Manhattan on Saturday, before he was taken to a facility in New Jersey, and then moved to Louisiana.
Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, an Algerian citizen of the Palestinian race. He reached the United States on a student visa in 2022 and received his green card two years later.
Khalil is now a legal permanent resident of the United States and his arrest represents the Trump administration’s efforts to overcome Palestinian protests in universities.
According to Reuters, a 28 -year -old dentist, Abdullah, attended a New York room court on Wednesday, where Khalil’s lawyers argued that his detention and possible exile violates the rights of his constitutional independent speech.
The detention order was extended while the court considers the legal status of arrest.
A federal judge stopped Khalil from deporting temporarily on Monday, saying he would remain in the United States because the court weighs in the challenge of arrest and detention.
The White House press secretary Karin Lavit said this week that Khalil “not only harassed group campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and forced them to feel unsafe at their own college campus, but also propagated with the neighbor’s logo.”
Abdullah told Reuters: “Mahmoud is Palestinian and he is always interested in Palestinian politics. He stands for his people, he is fighting for his people.”
On Wednesday night, Attorney Amy Greer, who is representing Khalil, told the NBC’s “top story with Tom Lilamas” on Wednesday night that the arrest was a clear constitutional violation.
He said, “This is not what we are accustomed to in this country, and it is a direct competition of our constitution that people should only be heard once again, no one knew why or where or how or how it was,” he added that he did not talk with Hamas.
Education Secretary Linda McMemon wrote this week to 60 colleges, including Columbia, if he failed to control hatred on the campus, he was warned of legal proceedings, which was complained by Jewish groups, last year was a feature of some protests.
The protests this week, including groups of Jewish students, demanded immediate release of Khalil.
