One cold evening in February 2024, Mahmoud Khalil, then a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), invited Zachary Foster, a historian of Palestine, to speak at the university. The encampment protests against the war in Gaza hadn’t started yet, but the momentum was building. Khalil had reached out to Foster personally, having followed his work, and made sure everything was in place. He showed Foster around campus, ensuring he knew where to go, where to stand, where to speak. And after the talk, they lingered, chatting in clusters until someone suggested they go out for food and drinks.
They ended up at a stuffy spot near campus, the kind of place where voices had to rise over the music. It was too loud inside, so they shuffled between the warmth of the packed room and the crisp winter air outside. The two struck up a conversation in Arabic, and when Foster hesitated, self-conscious about his language skills, Khalil waved it off.
“No, your Arabic is amazing,” he said, insisting Foster keep speaking. “I love speaking Arabic.”
It was a rare kind of generosity. Most fluent speakers would default to English, Foster said, but Khalil was just happy — along with being encouraging — to have someone speaking his native language. They spoke about Syria and about shared memories they both had of the country before the civil war broke out there. Foster recalls just someone who cared. “Soft-spoken. Gentle. Loved by everyone,” he recounted. “The kind of person every university should be proud to have.”
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A little over a year later, on March 8, Khalil was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at his Manhattan home. As Zeteo first reported, agents told him that his student visa had been revoked. When he said he was a green card holder, they said that had been revoked as well before taking him into custody in front of his wife, who is eight months pregnant. Two days later, a social media post from the President of the United States labeled Khalil a “pro-Hamas” terrorist sympathizer and threatened that it was the first arrest of “many to come.”
Khalil’s case raises urgent questions about what it means to be a non-citizen and to exercise First Amendment rights in America today. A recent Ivy League graduate and legal resident of the US, living in university-owned housing, was arrested for his activism, denied due process, transported to a detention center in Louisiana, and fast-tracked for deportation. It’s a stunning escalation, civil liberties organizations say, of the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants and of those whose political views do not align with the President’s. A New York federal judge has blocked Khalil’s deportation until his attorneys and the federal government can appear in court, and ordered that the case be transferred to New Jersey, where he was being held when his lawyers first sought his release, as The Guardian reported. In a letter dictated over the phone from detention, Khalil called himself a “political prisoner,” saying, “Justice escapes the contours of this nation's immigration facilities.”
Those who knew Khalil say they're floored by what is unfolding. Teen Vogue spoke to people who have known Khalil at different points in his life — aid workers, friends, and fellow activists — who describe a deeply committed, compassionate organizer who saw education as a way to serve others. A 30-year-old of Palestinian descent, Khalil grew up in wartime Syria, taught himself English, worked with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and eventually built a life in the US.
Jeromie Whalen, who once taught with Khalil at a refugee camp in Lebanon, says Khalil’s story was, in many ways, the American dream: resilience, perseverance, success. And yet, after everything, he’s found himself locked up in an ICE detention center without being charged with any crime, as his wife pleads to get him back. “They just wanted to make an example of somebody,” Whalen says. “He was just the easiest face to find in the crowd.”
In 2012, Khalil was a 17-year-old in Syria, ready to go to his dream university in Aleppo and study his dream course, aviation engineering. He had grown up in Yarmouk refugee camp in Southern Damascus, the grandson of Nakba survivors, who had been forced to flee their ancestral land in Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. They had built a life as refugees in Syria, where there is often hostility between Syrians and Palestinians.
But Syria was succumbing to the beginnings of its decade-long civil war. So the following year, the family made the decision for Khalil to move to Lebanon and have a chance at a better life. Across the border, in Beirut, he found himself without connections, resources, or a clear path forward. He worked construction jobs and painted houses — anything to survive. In his free time, he used YouTube videos to teach himself English. He found that Lebanon was no less hostile than Syria. Here, even discussing support for Syrian refugees was sensitive. Nonetheless, Khalil decided to volunteer with the international education nonprofit organization Jusoor, helping other Syrian refugees resettle and find opportunities.
Journalist Lauren Bohn arrived in Lebanon in 2013 to cover the plight of Syrian refugees and quickly became acquainted with Khalil as he helped her connect with Syrian refugees across Lebanon to document their stories. She never covered his story because he didn’t seek the limelight. In her recollection, he was actually quite shy. She says she found him resourceful and humble.
One afternoon in Beirut, Bohn and Khalil met for coffee in the Hamra neighborhood in Beirut’s city center. They spoke about Khalil’s desire to get an undergraduate degree and to help others. He initially had no idea how he would afford an education and didn’t know about support that was available. But a couple of years later, Khalil was awarded Jusoor’s scholarship to study computer science at the prestigious Lebanese American University (LAU) in Hamra. He was still working at Jusoor alongside his studies.
In 2017, Khalil was invited to the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, India, along with other youth leaders from conflict zones around the world. A video of the encounter shows Khalil in a collared shirt and gray trousers, sitting in the home of one of the world’s most revered spiritual leaders, sharing his story. Khalil said that during the two years that he was struggling to get by in Lebanon before getting a full-time job at Jusoor, the only thing that kept him going was the idea that “no more people can lose two years of their lives the same way [he] did, because, in those two years, these people may lose hope.” My question for you, your Holiness, is what’s a dream you lost and how did you console yourself after failing to achieve that dream?
In 2018, a group of volunteers arrived in Lebanon as part of Jusoor’s education program, designed to teach Syrian refugee children. Among them was Whalen, a high school teacher from Massachusetts, who had read a book about the war in Syria and felt compelled to help. In a series of group chats leading up to the trip, he first encountered Khalil — always polite, always positive, Whalen says. When they finally met in person, Khalil was working with Jusoor, helping orient the volunteers and managing multiple education centers.
The days of teaching were long and exhausting. Every morning, Whalen and the other volunteers would pile into a bus and make a three-hour journey to Joub Jannine, a small town in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. There the volunteers worked with the children — some teaching, others introducing them to creative outlets like photography. Then after a long day of work, they’d make their three-hour arduous trip back to Beirut.
At night, the group would unwind at a small bar called Amigos, a hole-in-the-wall joint run by a Lebanese man who prided himself on making pasta, much to the amusement of an Italian volunteer in their group. Over rounds of darts and quiet conversations, Khalil shared his story. He spoke of his college years in Syria, of the war that had derailed everything, of how he found himself alone in Lebanon trying to carve out a new existence. His English, once broken, was incredibly fluent, Whalen recalls.
At the same time, Khalil began working at the British government’s mission to Syria, which was headquartered in Beirut, administering the Chevening Scholarship. His colleague Andrew Waller recalls him being incredibly “competent” on the job, but also kind to others and the only Syrian in the entire office.
In 2022, Khalil was in Istanbul for the month of Ramadan visiting some distant relatives. Bohn also happened to be in Istanbul for some reporting. The two had stayed in touch over the years and decided to catch up with a large iftar spread, complete with meat dishes and mezze. Over dinner, Khalil shared his big news: He had been admitted to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) program. Bohn couldn’t have been more inspired by him. “I've just been honored to be able to watch his journey,” she says.
Khalil began at Columbia in January 2023 and settled comfortably into life at SIPA, studying for a master's in public administration. His fellow SIPA student Carly (who asked to withhold her last name out of concerns for her safety ), says he had a presence that was both steady and uplifting. He was the person who reached out when someone was struggling, including her. A few years older than many of his peers, Carly says he “took on a sense of responsibility over those around him.”
In SIPA student organizations that Khalil and Carly were a part of, he never sought the spotlight. After others spoke, he would often smile and say, “Well, I can never say it as eloquently as she did,” or, “I can't really follow up on that.” He was “just extremely, extremely humble, extremely complimentary of those around him,” Carly says.
Another one of Khalil’s friends, Bonnie Fisher, met Khalil when he came to speak at her human rights class. “I remember being very impressed and admiring him for just how calm and collected he is.”
The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent invasion of Gaza upended life on many US college campuses, including Columbia’s. Protests and altercations broke out between students and professors demonstrating against the killing of Palestinian civilians, and pro-Israel students who felt they were being discriminated against. Both Jewish and Arab students reported feeling unsafe on college campuses across the country during this time, as antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents rose. Khalil was involved with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, serving as a lead negotiator between the students and university administrators over their demand to disclose and divest university finances tied to Israel. He frequently gave press statements and quickly became one of the most visible activists in the student movement.
The school — and Khalil — were brought into the spotlight again in the early weeks after Trump took office, with the administration threatening to withdraw $400 million in federal grants from Columbia for failing to protect students and faculty from “antisemitic violence and harassment.” The Associated Press reported that Khalil had been under investigation by a new university office that has brought disciplinary charges against dozens of students for their pro-Palestinian activism. Simultaneously, pro-Israel groups have been calling publicly for the Trump administration to deport him from the United States, claiming that he supports Hamas. Zeteo reported that Khalil reached out to university administrators about the harassment and asked the interim president, Katrina Armstrong, for extra protection. (Teen Vogue reached out to Columbia for comment).
According to Carly, on the night of Khalil's detainment, a call had gone out in the SIPA student group chat warning that ICE officers had been seen on campus. Someone had asked for help for anyone who could be there. Carly forwarded it on, including to a group chat that Khalil was in. Mere hours before his detainment, he reached out to Carly: “How can I help?”
