Detained pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his son on Monday after US authorities refused a temporary release, his wife said.
A graduate student at New York’s Columbia University who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities on March 8.
He was ordered deported even though he was a permanent US resident through his American citizen wife, Noor Abdalla.
Abdalla said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied a request to release Khalil temporarily for the birth of their child.
“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer,” she said in a statement.
A UCLA international graduate student has been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border and is being held by Customs and Border Protection, the school confirmed late Thursday.
The student, whose name was not released, was taken into custody Wednesday night, according to faculty members and students who quickly organized a campus rally in her support Thursday evening.
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Few details were released about the student, including her name and nationality. Faculty, and an immigration attorney who has been attempting to contact the student, said late Thursday they had not yet spoken to her. They added that the student was detained at the San Ysidro border crossing south of San Diego and was able to reach a UCLA contact before she was taken into custody.
It is unclear why the student was in Mexico or what led to her detention.
Earlier in April:
On April 4, UC San Diego said an international student there was also detained at the U.S.-Mexico border while attempting to cross. In a campus message, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said the student was “detained at the border, denied entry and deported to their home country.”
UCLA international student detained at U.S.-Mexico border amid Trump visa cancellations
UCLA confirmed that an international student was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. A campus rally was quickly organized in her support.
From law firms and universities to the arts and the press, Trump has targeted these independent actors and tried to bend them to his worldview — willingly or not.
One by one, he is bending ostensibly independent actors under the weight of his power. So far, Trump has targeted the legal community, universities, the arts, career government employees and the press and brought them to heel in some measure, willingly or not. Law firms with even indirect ties to past investigations of Trump now face punitive measures that could put them out of business.
If Trump prevails by the end of his term, he’ll have influenced who votes in American elections and who does not, who gets to stay in America and who must leave, who pays off their student loans and who gets relief, who gets to question the president and who doesn’t.
He’s facing pushback, but working to sweep it away. A pliant Congress has largely forsaken its oversight role since Trump thundered back into office, leaving the courts as the main impediment to his ambitions. And Trump is challenging their authority with a resolve that has nudged the nation closer to a constitutional crisis than at any point in the last half century.
Pessimistic about government’s ability to hold Trump to account, one U.S. senator said a mass uprising may be the only means of derailing his plans.
“Ultimately, popular mobilization” is the only way to tame Trump, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in an interview. The nation’s fate may come down to “the people on both the right and the left rising up in protest and demanding reform.”
Trump quickly works to concentrate power and muzzle critical voices
From law firms and universities to the arts and the press, Trump has targeted these independent actors and tried to bend them to his worldview — willingly or not.
When a protester was caught on video in January at a New York rally against Israel, only her eyes were visible between a mask and headscarf. But days later, photos of her entire face, along with her name and employer, were circulated online.
“Months of them hiding their faces went down the drain!” a fledgling technology company boasted in a social media post, claiming its facial-recognition tool had identified the woman despite the coverings.
She was anything but a lone target. The same software was also used to review images taken during months of pro-Palestinian marches at U.S. colleges. A right-wing Jewish group said some people identified with the tool were on a list of names it submitted to President Donald Trump’s administration, urging that they be deported in accordance with his call for the expulsion of foreign students who participated in “pro-jihadist” protests.
So it’s ok for extremist Jewish groups to show bias against the Palestinian people, who have suffered horribly the past two years? Supporting the Palestinian people does not mean that one supports Hamas and/or terror.
“If you’re here, right, on a student visa causing civil unrest … assaulting people on the streets, chanting for people’s death, why the heck did you come to this country?” said Eliyahu Hawila, a software engineer who built the tool designed to identify masked protesters and outed the woman at the January rally.
Eliyahu Hawila, software engineer and fake Jew
And who is Eliyahu Hawila? He is not Jewish, although he has pretended to be a Jew. More on that in separate post.
Private groups work to identify and report student protesters for possible deportation
President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations are getting help from private groups that use facial-recognition technology to identify masked protesters.
Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came under increasing scrutiny after more details emerged Wednesday showing that he posted plans of an imminent military strike against Houthi militants, including the timing and weapon systems, on an unclassified group chat used by senior administration officials.
Several Democrats called for his resignation, saying Hegseth had flouted longstanding security procedures for handling sensitive military information. And the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter Wednesday requesting the Pentagon inspector general to investigate the chat.
It asks for an assessment of Defense Department policies on sharing of sensitive and classified information on nongovernmental networks and messaging services and to examine whether any individuals transferred classified information to unclassified systems.
“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), who chairs the committee told reporters. “If mistakes were made…they should be acknowledged.”
The new messages made public by the Atlantic magazine Wednesday showed that Hegseth texted details to other senior administration officials about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack and mentions intelligence that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a “known location.”
Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries.
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“The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen,” [Sen. Mark] Kelly wrote on X on Wednesday. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”
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Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.
“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”
The Trump administration is discussing plans to try to block certain colleges from having any foreign students if it decides too many are “pro-Hamas,” senior Justice and State Department officials tell Axios.
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A senior State Department official called the demonstrators it’s targeting “Hamasniks” — people the government claims have shown support for the terror group.
More than 300 foreign students have had their student visas revoked in the three weeks “Catch and Revoke” has been in operation, the official said. There are 1.5 million student visa-holders nationwide.
“Everyone is fair game,” the official said.
Exclusive: Trump’s “pro-Hamas” purge could block foreign students from colleges
The Trump administration is discussing plans to try to block certain colleges from having any foreign students if it decides too many are “pro-Hamas,” senior Justice and State Department officials tell Axios. Why it matters: The effort — which could include grand jury subpoenas —marks another escalation of Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration and antisemitism that civil libertarians say stifles campus speech and has led to several…
MPs voiced fury today after an extraordinary security bungle revealed some of Donald Trump’s most senior team condemning Europe as ‘pathetic freeloaders’.
A bombshell exchange on the Signal messaging app – accidentally shared with a journalist – showed an elite group including JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Mike Waltz voicing ‘loathing’ for their long-term allies.
They also discuss how to get money out of European countries in return for US military strikes intended to stop Houthi rebels disrupting critical shipping routes in the Red Sea.
But UK politicians said glimpse behind the scenes showed America was ‘unreliable’ and accused them of plotting ‘extortion’. One normally US-friendly MP described the situation as a ‘nightmare’ and warned Europe must ‘take it seriously and not think it’s just casual chat’.
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Fury as Team Trump voice ‘loathing’ for ‘pathetic freeloaders’ Europe
A bombshell exchange on the Signal messaging app – accidentally shared with a journalist – showed an elite group voicing ‘loathing’ for their long-term allies.
Former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) posited in a new Substack piece that the nearly decade-long fever pervading the GOP thanks to a “virus called Donald Trump” is finally showing signs of breaking.
Kinzinger described this insidious “political pathogen” as causing “a fever so disorienting that many cannot see his malevolence.”
But Kinzinger wrote that the president’s failure to shift the economy into high gear as he promised on the campaign trailhas many voters wiping the scales from their eyes.
‘Political pathogen’ of Trump ‘fever’ may finally be breaking: Ex-GOP lawmaker
Former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) posited in a new Substack piece that the nearly decade-long fever pervading the GOP thanks to a “virus called Donald Trump” is finally showing signs of breaking. Kinzinger described this insidious “political pathogen” as causing “a fever so disorienting that many cannot see his malevolence.” But Kinz…
