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Trump Admin 'Reviewing' Visas After Arrest of Dozens of Pro-Palestinian Protesters at Columbia
"Repression breeds resistance—if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus," wrote Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
May 08, 2025
The New York Police Department arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian protestors on Columbia University's campus on Wednesday evening—prompting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce on X that the federal government is reviewing the visa status of those involved in the action.
On Wednesday afternoon, masked protestors, many wearing keffiyehs, gathered in Columbia's Butler Library. Video of the protest posted to social media shows demonstrators inside the library chanting "free Palestine."
Columbia has been under intense scrutiny from the Trump administration in recent months over the school's alleged failure to protect Jewish students. Critics say the administration is weaponizing antisemitism to attack Palestinian rights advocates. In March, the school faced backlash for making policy changes in line with demands from the Trump administration following the administration's decision to freeze $400 million in federal grants for the school.
Late Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X: "We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University's library. Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation."
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the professed aim of rooting out antisemitism at higher education institutions, and vowed to target foreign-born students who have engaged in "pro-jihadist" protests.
Acting university president Claire Shipman authorized the NYPD to enter campus around 7 pm on Wednesday in response to the rally in the library, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator. The student paper reported that the NYPD arrested roughly 75 protesters and began leading them out of the library shortly thereafter.
The Daily Spectator also reported that there were altercations between the police and protestors after the arrests made in connection to the library protest.
Eighty people "who did not comply with verbal warnings by the NYPD to disperse" were taken into custody, according to the NYPD, per reporting from CNN. Seventy-eight of those taken into custody were arrested and two others were issued summonses, the NYPD told the outlet. CNN noted that it's not clear how many of those arrested came from the protest inside the building.
The group Columbia University Apartheid Divest wrote on Substack on Wednesday that the protestors renamed the library in honor of Palestinian activist Basil al-Araj.
The organizers said that the action at the library "shows that as long as Columbia funds and profits from imperialist violence, the people will continue to disrupt Columbia's profits and legitimacy. Repression breeds resistance—if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus."
In May of last year, the NYPD swept an occupation of Hamilton Hall and arrested dozens of student protestors.
Wednesday's events come not long after arrests by federal immigration agents of multiple noncitizens who had been active in pro-Palestine actions on Columbia's campus.
In March, federal immigration agents arrested pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who is currently languishing in an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, Louisiana. Another Palestinian green-card holder active in Columbia's student protest movement, Mohsen Mahdawi, was also arrested by federal immigration agents, but last month was released on bail.
Both of those cases have generated significant national attention.
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Jewish Voices for Palestine and Free Speech Slam House GOP 'Kangaroo Hearing' on Antisemitism
"What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe and everything to do with crushing dissent," said one Barnard College student.
May 07, 2025
Jewish students and academics for Palestinian rights and free speech on Wednesday condemned a congressional hearing in which House Republicans repeatedly conflated opposition to Zionism and Israeli crimes against Palestine with antisemitism, while Democratic lawmakers warned against the weaponization of civil rights to suppress dissent.
The House Education and Workforce Committee held the hearing—titled "Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses"—which followed last year's panel on antisemitism, both real and contrived, at Columbia University.
This time, the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University were grilled by lawmakers including committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who said that Israel should deal with Gaza "m like Nagasaki and Hiroshima" and was a manager at the Moody Bible Institute, which according to a memo from a group of mostly Jewish Haverford professors, "trains students to convert Jewish people to Christianity."
The memo notes that committee member Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) once said Jews and Muslims will never know "peace in their soul" until they renounce their religions and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. Another committee member, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), said that Nazi leader Adolf oHitler was "right" about political movements' need to capture youth support, before later apologizing.
Yet these and other Republican lawmakers on the panel pressured the three university presidents to crack down on constitutionally protected speech, while conflating support for Palestine and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
"Haverford employs faculty members who engage in blatant antisemitism with no apparent consequences," said Walberg. "For example, one professor declared online that Zionism is Nazism."
Asked by Walberg if the phrase "long live the intifada"—an affirmation of Palestinians' legal right to armed resistance against Israeli oppression—is "protected speech at Haverford's campus," college president Wendy Raymond incorrectly said, "That is an antisemitic form of speech."
Walberg also falsely called the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "unprovoked" and singled out students and faculty who praised Palestinians who resist Israel—which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and whose prime minister and former defense minister are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and forced starvation, in Gaza.
DePaul University president Robert Manuel said he was "deeply sorry" for "mistakes" made at the Chicago school, where two Jewish students were brutally attacked last November in what prosecutors have charged as a hate crime, while touting the banning of pro-Palestine groups including Students for Justice in Palestine from campus.
While noting that the Constitution "doesn't protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled 'harassment,'" Georgetown University Law Center professor and former ACLU national legal director David Cole told the committee that the First Amendment "protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy."
Cole accused the committee of making "broad-based charges of antisemitism without any factual predicate."
"To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold," Cole contended. "And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans."
Cole also took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump's weaponization of antisemitism to threaten and defund colleges and universities that don't crack down on Palestine defenders, stressing that "the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints."
Dozens of Jewish Haverford students signed an open letter to members of the House Education Committee ahead of Wednesday's hearing stating that "we are all deeply concerned by how you are weaponizing our pain and anguish for your own purposes."
Letter to the Editor: Jewish Haverford Students Reject Congress’ Weaponization of Antisemitism haverfordclerk.com/letter-to-th...
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— Karen Masters ( @karenlmasters.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
"It is clear to us that these hearings will not, and have no desire to, protect us or combat antisemitism," the letter says. "Instead, this congressional hearing weaponizes antisemitism to target freedom of speech on college campuses, silences political dissidents, and attacks students who speak out in solidarity with Palestine. It is a blatant assault on our Black, brown, transgender, queer, noncitizen, and Palestinian peers."
A day before the hearing, the group Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVPA)—which called the panel a "kangaroo hearing"— brought nine Columbia University and affiliated students to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and "speak about their experiences as Jewish students who have been steadfastly committed to advocating for the safety and freedom of the Palestinian people."
Columbia junior Shay Orentlicher said that "I'm here asking my representatives to call for the release of my friend Mahmoud Khalil and to put real pressure on the Trump regime," referring to the permanent U.S. resident facing deportation after helping to lead pro-Palestine protests at the New York City university.
"I cannot stand to see the Trump administration smear Mahmoud as an antisemite when it could not be further than the truth," Orentlicher added.
Tali Beckwith-Cohen, a Jewish senior at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, argued: "The Trump regime is using false allegations of antisemitism to disappear our friends, punish student protestors, and dismantle higher education. What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe, and everything to do with crushing dissent."
"Thousands of Jews on campuses across the country have spoken out in solidarity with the people of Gaza and we will not be silent," Beckwith-Cohen vowed.
JVPA political director Beth Miller contended that "the far-right does not care about Jewish safety."
"Trump and his allies in Congress are platforming neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, all while pretending to care about antisemitism in order to take a hatchet to our communities and most basic freedoms," Miller added. "This is intended to silence the Palestinian rights movement, sow chaos, and sharpen authoritarian tools that will then be used to dismantle civil liberties and democracy itself."
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education Committee, pushed back on Republicans' assertions during Wednesday's hearing, noting that "my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not held any hearings on other forms of discrimination and hate, such as racism, Title IX gender violations, Islamophobia, homophobia, or the challenges of meeting the needs of students with disabilities."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) noted that Trump praised attendees of the deadly 2017 "United the Right" white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people," and that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Covid was engineered to target white and Black people but spare Jewish people."
Casar asked committee Republicans to condemn these and other antisemitic incidents by raising their hands. None did.
Antisemitism is an assault on all of our values. So why would Republicans cut funding to address hate crimes or protect synagogues? Republicans are not trying to keep Jewish students safe. They're trying to keep the Israeli government safe from any form of criticism.
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— Congressman Greg Casar ( @repcasar.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
"Not a single Republican today has been willing to condemn any of this antisemitism," Casar lamented. "Unfortunately, the party of 'very fine people on both sides' or ' Jewish space lasers' does not give a damn about stopping antisemitism. If my Republican colleagues want to stop the spread of antisemitism, maybe they should stop apologizing for and promoting antisemites."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) argued that "it is abundantly clear that the cynical work of the majority party on this committee is now being expanded and weaponized by the [Trump] administration seeking to squash dissent."
"Political protest, anti-war protest, pro-Palestinian protest—this is all protected speech under the First Amendment, regardless of citizenship status," Omar said after listing a number of Palestine defenders, including green-card holders, targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.
"Using immigration authorities to target, abduct, and detain noncitizens for their activism is a clear violation of their rights and a hallmark of an authoritarian government," she added.
Asserting that "throughout history, college campuses have been the places where worldviews, politics, cultures meet," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said thato "some of the most transformative movements for justice in this country were ignited by students on college campuses."
"We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other."
"Now, that tradition of protest, academic freedom, and the core principle of free speech is under attack," Lee noted. "Not genuinely in the name of safety and student well-being, but under the guise of control used to suppress the voices of marginalized groups."
Lee said that it's clear that committee Republicans don't care about tackling antisemitism and other forms of bigotry "because they've dismantled and closed regional offices for civil rights... tasked with investigating antisemitism, that they have not spoken out against the Nazi salutes of Elon Musk or the Great Replacement Theory that led to the largest antisemitic massacre in my district."
"They have done nothing about anti-Blackness—I won't hold my breath for a hearing on that," she continued.
"We haven't acknowledged that our safety and our liberation are tied together," Lee added. "We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other... We are the closest we have ever been—ever been—to losing our civil liberties. We have to fight against it."
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'I Am Not Afraid of You,' Freed Mohsen Mahdawi Tells Donald Trump
The court's order for the release of the detained student protest leader, said one lawyer, "is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest."
Apr 30, 2025
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student targeted for deportation by the Trump administration because he participated in anti-genocide protests at Columbia University, was released on bail Wednesday following an order from Vermont-based U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
Politicoreported that upon his release, Mahdawi shared a message for President Donald Trump outside the courthouse.
"I am saying it clear and loud," Mahdawi declared. "To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you."
When Mahdawi, a green-card holder, arrived at a Colchester, Vermont immigration office to complete the process of becoming a U.S. citizen earlier this month, he was arrested by masked, hooded federal agents and put in an unmarked vehicle.
Mahdawi has been held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans since U.S. District Judge William Sessions III blocked the Trump administration's attempt to send him to a detention facility in Louisiana, like other student organizers.
His legal team—including attorneys with the ACLU and Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR)—is arguing in court that Mahdawi's detention violates his constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
"Nobody should fear detention for exercising their rights under the First Amendment. We are delighted that the court recognized that Mohsen is not a flight risk and that he should be released while his case proceeds," said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, in a Wednesday statement.
CLEAR staff attorney Shezza Abboushi Dallal also welcomed the development: "The court's order to free Mohsen today is a victory for Mohsen, in his just pursuit of continued advocacy for Palestinian lives, and it is a victory for all people in this country invested in their ability to dissent and speak and protest for causes they are morally drawn to. We will continue our legal battle for Mohsen until his constitutional rights are fully vindicated."
Vermont's congressional delegation—Rep. Becca Balint (D) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I) and Peter Welch (D.)—said in a joint statement Wednesday that "we are relieved that Mohsen Mahdawi was released on bail... and that the constitutional right to due process has prevailed."
"Mohsen Mahdawi is here in the United States legally and acted legally. He should never have experienced this grave injustice," they added. "The Trump Administration's actions in this case—and in so many other cases of wrongfully detained, deported, and disappeared people—are shameful and immoral. This is an important first step. We will continue the fight against President Trump's assault on the rule of law.”
The trio has been advocating for Mahdawi since his arrest. Welch visited him in detention last week and Sanders was among several lawmakers who spoke at a Tuesday rally organized by Balint outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C.
"Mohsen Mahdawi is a cherished member of our community in Vermont, and I want to do everything that I can to elevate his story, because it is an indication of just how far from our values we have strayed," Balint said.
"This administration needs to know that we are watching very carefully what they are doing, that we care about our rights," she stressed, addressing the importance of taking to the streets to protest Trump's actions. "It is about standing up for all of our rights, but it's also about giving Mohsen Mahdawi and other people like him the understanding that we are standing with him."
Highlighting some other cases that have made headlines during Trump's first 100 days, Balint said that "people right now, in our country, are being disappeared by this administration. Children with cancer are being shipped off illegally—babies. Students are being harassed, and detained, and intimidated, and threatened. Why? Because they exercised free speech rights and the right to assemble. These are the rights that are basic to who we are—or who we say we are—as Americans."
Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, which remains illegally occupied by Israel. Sanders noted Tuesday that "he has used his voice to advocate for peace, justice, and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis."
Speaking out against Mahdawi's arrest, the senator said that "not only was this action cruel and inhumane, most importantly, it was illegal, it was unconstitutional."
"This is not just about Mohsen Mahdawi. It is about you and you and you," he continued, pointing to members of the crowd. "If you can pick up a legal resident off the streets, throw them into a car, and put them in jail without any due process, that could happen to you."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who recently traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and Reps. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) also delivered remarks on Tuesday, as did leaders from Demand Progress and Indivisible.
Many of them pointed to others swept up in the Trump administration's effort to crush critics and carry out mass deportations, including Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to a megaprison in his native El Salvador alongside hundreds of Venezuelan migrants; former Columbia organizer Mahmoud Khalil; Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University; and Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk.
A federal district court judge had ordered the Trump administration to transfer Öztürk, a Turkish national, from Louisiana to Vermont by Thursday for a hearing on her petition challenging her detention. However, the government appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Tuesday halted the directive. Arguments for the appeal are now scheduled for next week.
Öztürk's legal team, which also includes the ACLU and CLEAR, said in response to Tuesday's decision that "Rümeysa Öztürk never should have been arrested and detained, period. We are ready to argue her case before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and we won't stop fighting until she is free."
Also on Tuesday, a U.S. district judge in New Jersey rejected the Trump administration's attempt to shut down Khalil's lawsuit arguing that the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views. Like Öztürk and Mahdawi, his legal team includes the ACLU and CLEAR.
"The court has affirmed that the federal government does not have the unreviewable authority to trample on our fundamental freedoms," Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said Tuesday. "This is a huge step forward for Mahmoud and for the other students and scholars that the Trump administration has unlawfully detained in retaliation for their political speech, and a rebuke of attempts by the executive to use immigration laws to weaken First Amendment protections for political gain."
Khalil recently missed the birth of his child, due to his detention. His wife, Noor Abdalla, said Tuesday that "as I am now caring for our barely week-old son, it is even more urgent that we continue to speak out for Mahmoud's freedom, and for the freedom of all people being unjustly targeted for advocating against Israel's genocide in Gaza."
"I am relieved at the court's finding that my husband can move forward with his case in federal court," added Abdalla, a U.S. citizen. "This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud's freedom. But there is still more work to be done. I will continue to strongly advocate for my husband, so he can come home to our family, and feel the pure joy all parents know of holding your first-born child in your arms."
All of these cases are expected to continue to move through the federal judicial system. One case—Abrego Garcia's—has already reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the high court's right-wing supermajority, which includes three Trump appointees, the justices earlier this month unanimously ordered Trump to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the United States.
During a Tuesday interview, ABC News anchor Terry Moran suggested that Trump could bring Abrego Garcia home to his family in Maryland with one phone call, saying: "You could get him back. There's a phone on this desk."
Trump responded: "I could... And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that." The president then accused him of being a member of the gang MS-13, which Abrego Garcia has denied.
On Wednesday, Trump's homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, toldCBS News that Abrego Garcia "is not under our control. He is an El Salvador citizen. He is home there in his country. If he were to be brought back to the United States of America, we would immediately deport him again."
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