By Jonathan Allen
New York (Reuters), two days before US agents, arrested Mahmoud Halil, a student and Palestinian activist at the University of Colombia, asked his wife if she knew what to do if immigration agents came to their door.
Noor Abdala, Khalil’s wife for more than two years, said she was confused. As a legal permanent US resident, Khalil certainly didn’t have to worry about it, she recalls, who was telling him.
Trusted news and daily temptations, right in your inbox
See Sami-Youodel is the source of Daily News, Entertainment and Feel Food.
“I didn’t take it seriously. I’m clear that I was naive,” Abdallah, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant, told Reuters in her first media interview.
The US Department of Homeland Security Agents with handcuffs on Saturday in the lobby of their residential building owned by the University of Manhattan. Halil’s arrest is one of President Donald Trump’s first efforts, a Republican who returned to the White House in January to fulfill his promise to seek deportation of some foreign students participating in the propalist protest movement.
Earlier on Wednesday, Abdala, a 28-year-old dentist in New York, was sitting in the first row of the Manhattan courtroom while Halil’s lawyers arrested the federal judge that he had been arrested by revenge for his outspoken in-law against Gaza. Halil’s speech.
The judge extended his order, blocking Halil’s deportation while he believes whether the arrest was constitutional.
Trump said, without evidence that the 30 -year -old Khalil had encouraged Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group who rules Gaza. His administration said Khalil was not charged or charged with a crime, but Trump says his presence in the United States is “contrary to national and external political interests.”
“Kind, real soul”
On Sunday, the Trump administration transferred Halil from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Prison in Elizabeth, New Jersey, near Manhattan, in the rural yen prison, Louisiana, about 1200 miles (2000 km).
Abdala and Halil met in Lebanon in 2016 when she joined a volunteer program that Khalil watched in a non -profit group that provides educational scholarships to Syrian youth. They began as friends before a seven -year long -distance relationship led to their wedding in New York in 2023.
“He is the most amazing person who cares so much for other people,” she said. “He is the most lovely, real soul.”
The couple is expecting their first child at the end of April. She said that by then Khalil would be free. She showed Reuters a photo of a recent sonogram: a boy whose name is yet to choose.
“I think it would be very devastating for me and to meet his first child behind a glass screen,” Abdala said, adding that Halil had insisted on doing all the cooking, washing and cleaning during his pregnancy. “I’ve always been so excited that he was his first baby with the man I love.”
The government said it had launched Halil’s deportation proceedings and until then defended its detention in court proceedings.
Trump called anti-Israeli student protest movement anti-Semite and said “is the first arrest of many to come.”
Interpretation from campus to prison
Halil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and came to the United States for a student visa in 2022, receiving his permanent residence last year. He completed his studies at the Colombia International and Public Affairs School in December, but is yet to receive a master’s degree diploma.
He became a high -ranking member of the Student Protest Movement of the University of Ivy League, often spoke to the media as one of the leading negotiators with the Colombia administration over the annual demands of the protesters to end the investment in its $ 14.8 billion in the creators of weapons and other companies that support the Israel government.
More than 1,200 people were killed in Israel in the invasion of Hamas, in which 251 hostages were taken to Gaza, according to Israeli Tals. Since then, the attacks of Israel have killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
The Trump administration says propalist protests in college campuses, including Colombia, have included support for Hamas, which the United States has identified as a terrorist organization, and anti -Semitic harassment of Jewish students. Student protest organizers claim that criticism of Israel is incorrectly associated with anti -Semitism.
The Jewish Faculty in Colombia held a rally and press conference in support of Halil in front of a university building on Monday, holding signs, saying that “Jews say no” to deportations. “
But Abdal said that none of the Colombia administration had contacted her to offer help, which she found disappointing.
She said that her husband’s focus was on supporting his community through advocacy and more, despite ways. She had a few short phone calls with Halil from prison, where he told her that he was helping other detained migrants with bad English, filled in forms written on legal and donate food to his prison bought from his commissioner account.
“Mahmoud is Palestinian and has always been interested in Palestinian politics,” she said. “He stands up for his people, he fights for his people.”
Abdala ended the interview on Wednesday sharply when she saw that Khalil was calling her from prison.
(Jonathan Alan Report in New York; Additional Reporting by Caitlin Ox in New York; Edit by Donna Bryson, Paul Tomash, Bill Bercrot)