President Trump launched his attack on campus antisemitism with a stunning one-two punch at Columbia University but warned Monday that the campaign to root out “pro-terrorist” activity in academia had just begun.
The administration hit the Manhattan university over the weekend with a double whammy by pulling $400 million in federal grant funding and then moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist who attended the school as a permanent U.S. resident on a green card.
Mr. Trump said Monday that the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement action was “the first arrest of many to come.”
“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,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told White House reporters that the Columbia arrest won’t be the last.
“We are going to continue to identify other students that may have been involved in these protests as well and take the same action,” she said.
Leo Terrell, the Justice Department senior counsel who leads the administration’s newly created Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, said the crackdown at Columbia “should serve as a deterrent.”
“The task force is sending a message: The Trump administration and [Attorney General] Pam Bondi will not tolerate antisemitism on college campuses,” Mr. Terrell told Fox News Channel host Harris Faulkner.
Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Mr. Khalil is a former Columbia graduate student who “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
“ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security,” she said in an email.
Pro-Palestinian groups, free speech advocates and several congressional Democrats expressed outrage over the deportation move.
“Utterly outrageous. This is un-American,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, posted on X. “The forced disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil for nothing more than constitutionally protected speech is a clear assault on first amendment rights and a blatant act of authoritarianism.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called the arrest “a blatant attack on the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, immigration laws, and the very humanity of Palestinians.” It said a legal challenge is in the works.
Columbia interim President Katrina Armstrong said the university “has and will continue to follow the law.”
She said the funding cancellations would “touch nearly every corner of the University.” Still, she insisted that the institution under her tenure has put teeth into disciplinary protocols that “previously existed only on paper.”
“I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns,” Ms. Armstrong said Friday in a statement. “To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus. This is our number one priority.”
Columbia protesters have continued to make headlines this year for anti-Israel mayhem. In January, four activists crashed the first day of a class on the history of modern Israel, distributed flyers with antisemitic images and refused repeated requests to leave.
Two students from Barnard College, Columbia’s affiliated women’s college, were expelled over the incident. A third student was expelled last week in connection with the May takeover of Hamilton Hall.
Four Columbia students were arrested and suspended last week for protesting the expulsions at Barnard’s Milstein Library, ABC7 in New York City reported.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which the university does not recognize, taunted Columbia officials after federal agents arrested Mr. Khalil on Saturday at his apartment in a university-owned building.
“Columbia University has bent over backwards to satiate the Zionist death machine — brutalizing [its] own students, awarding former [Israeli] soldiers thousands of dollars after assaulting protesters, surveilling and shutting out the Harlem community — was it worth it?” the group asked on Instagram.
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said, “Columbia will now pay a serious price for its indefensible inaction.”
He said, “Noncitizens like Khalil should not be allowed to endanger Americans by remaining in our country.”
Dozens of major universities, including Columbia, Harvard and the University of California system, were flooded with demonstrations against Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and subsequent Israeli war against Hamas.
The universities were accused of failing to protect Jewish students from harassment and threats, prompting multiple complaints to the Department of Education’s civil rights office, lawsuits and a House investigation.
