“The Trump Administration will not tolerate” such intransigence, said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Columbia University came under fire from the White House Tuesday for not cooperating with federal authorities trying to find more students who support Hamas terrorism, following the arrest over the weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, one of the ringleaders of anti-Israel protests on campus.
“Columbia University has been given the names of other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity, and they are refusing to help DHS [Department of Homeland Security] identify those individuals on campus,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing.
DHS has intelligence on certain students “who have engaged in such behavior and activity, and especially illegal activity,” she said, and not accommodating the authorities was unacceptable.
Leavitt warned that President Donald Trump meant it when he wrote on his Truth Social platform the previous day that “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
Trump had applauded Khalil’s arrest and promised that “This is the first arrest of many to come,” as “terrorist agitators” were not welcome in the United States and would be found and deported.
“We expect all American colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy,” the press secretary stated.
Civil rights proponents have defended the school administration’s intransigence, as they consider Khalil’s arrest an attack on his right to freedom of speech.
“It is beyond the pale,” Donna Lieberman, the president of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Monday of his detention. “It’s targeted, retaliatory and an extreme attack on the First Amendment. And it reeks of McCarthyism.”
The interim president of the university, Katrina Armstrong, wrote a letter to students Monday in which she upheld Columbia’s “deep commitment to freedom of speech” and also felt the “distress that many of you are feeling about the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the streets around campus.”
She rejected the claim that the school had requested their presence, saying that it was Columbia’s “longstanding practice… that law enforcement must have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Columbia’s journalism school had called a meeting of its faculty and students that showcased the school’s opinion of the administration.
The speakers warned those who were not American citizens to “avoid publishing work on Gaza, Ukraine, and protests related to their former classmate’s arrest,” the report said, citing the school’s dean, Jelani Cobb as stating, “Nobody can protect you” from arrest. These are dangerous times.”
Khalil, who just completed his master’s degree in December, had been heavily involved in the anti-Israel demonstrations, encampments and building take-overs in the university since Hamas sparked war with the Jewish state by invading it on October 7, 2023, and leading the slaughter of 1,200 people.
Just prior to his arrest, Secretary of State Marc Rubio revoked Khalil’s right to permanent residency (green card), as the law allows this for individuals who are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”
The deportation of the Syrian-born Khalil has been temporarily blocked by a U.S. District Court judge, who will hold a hearing on the matter on Wednesday.
