The wife of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil said she and her husband were returning to their apartment after breaking their Ramadan fast when immigration agents confronted them and arrested Khalil in a case that has prompted protests calling for his release.
Her plea came as protesters demanded the release of the Palestinian activist for a second straight day. President Donald Trump said his arrest is the first of many.
“US immigration ripped my soul from me,” Khalil’s wife said in Tuesday night’s statement. “Instead of putting together our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of our first child, I am left sitting in our apartment, wondering when Mahmoud will get a chance to call me from a detention center.”
Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder, was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from his university-owned apartment Saturday night after he was told his student visa was being revoked, his attorney, Amy Greer, has said.
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Khalil's wife said Tuesday that they had returned from an Iftar dinner when they were followed and confronted by ICE agents. Iftar is a meal that breaks fasting during Muslims' Ramadan holy month observations.
She said agents told her to go to the couple's apartment upstairs or face arrest as she continued to stay by her husband's side.
"We were not shown any warrant and the ICE officers hung up the phone on our lawyer," she said.
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Agents whisked him away in an unmarked vehicle, she said, as she struggled to process what happened.
"Watching this play out in front of me was traumatizing: It felt like a scene from a movie I never signed up to watch," Khalil's wife said.
She said Khalil had been concerned enough about recent threats and what she described as a "targeted doxxing campaign" against him in recent days that he emailed a Columbia University official the previous day expressing his fear and asking for legal help.
Khalil’s wife quoted his email: “I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support and I urge you to intervene."
She said the official didn't respond. In a court filing, Greer, Khalil's lawyer, said the intended recipient was Columbia's interim president, Katrina Armstrong.
The school did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Protesters amassed outside City Hall on Tuesday and again at Washington Square Park in New York City as several events decrying Khalil's arrest were scheduled or have taken place across the country.
"Students and faculty across the country are staging walkouts today to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil," said the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, which has also demanded his release.
In a statement Tuesday night released through a spokesperson working on the case with Khalil’s lawyers, Khalil's wife, who was not named, detailed the arrest and asked supporters to continue their pressure campaign to hasten a possible release as the couple is expecting a child in April.
Cellphone video of a downtown Manhattan protest showed some in the crowd clashing with officers in the street. Police said it was too early to report possible arrests, with a statement expected Tuesday evening.
At UCLA, students gathered at Dickson Plaza on campus, where megaphones and rattling drums punctuated calls for Khalil's release.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk announced Monday that the university would launch an "Initiative to Combat Antisemitism" that will include recommendations on how it can combat anti-Israel bias, he said in a message to the UCLA community.
"UCLA is at an inflection point," Frenk said. "Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively."
Students at Stanford University in Santa Clara County, California, gathered on campus in the afternoon to protest the arrest, according to aerial video from NBC Bay Area.
A rally was also planned at Federal Plaza in Chicago, and at the University of California Berkeley, an outside group, the General Union of Palestine Students, planned a demonstration titled "ICE: Release Mahmoud Khalil NOW!"
Khalil is being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
Greer said that ICE agents were told that Khalil has a green card and is a permanent resident, but that he was arrested anyway.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman temporarily blocked Khalil from being deported, saying he will remain in the United States as the court weighs challenges to his arrest and planned deportation.
A detention hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, but Khalil will not be present, his legal team said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said his arrest was in coordination with ICE and the State Department in support of Trump's "executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism" and because Khalil "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." Trump and his administration did not provide evidence of the allegations against Khalil.
The State Department said Tuesday that Khalil was arrested under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows noncitizens to be deported if the secretary of state determines their "presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States," a spokesperson said.
Last spring, Khalil helped organize protests at the university about the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
Trump said on Truth Social that Khalil’s arrest was the first of many to come. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday on X that the administration would revoke the visas and green cards "of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported."
Greer said the comments by Trump and government officials show the illegality of Khalil’s arrest.
"He was chosen as an example to stifle entirely lawful dissent in violation of the First Amendment," she said in a statement Monday night.
"While tomorrow or thereafter the government may cite the law or process, that toothpaste is out of the tube and irreversibly so," Greer added. "The government’s objective is as transparent as it is unlawful, and our role as Mahmoud’s lawyers is to ensure it does not prevail."
The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that lawyers from its national and New York state offices are joining Khalil's legal defense team after, it argued on social media, "ICE unlawfully arrested and detained him in retaliation for his political views."
Greer said that she talked to Khalil and that he was in good spirits and appreciated the support. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, pleaded to have him by her side before their baby is born.
"For everyone reading this, I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby," she said in a separate statement released by Greer.
She called him her "rock" and said everyone who has met him "can attest to his incredible character, humbleness, selflessness, and his love for helping others."
"I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world," she said.
There were two arrests and no other serious incidents at Monday’s rally in New York City, according to the office of the police department's deputy commissioner for public information.
It said in a statement that a 21-year-old man was arrested and accused of obstructing governmental administration, which essentially earned him a ticket ordering him to appear in court, and that a 33-year-old man was arrested and accused of assault, the details of which were unavailable.
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