The New York Police Department has made multiple arrests after dozens of activists swarmed Trump Tower to protest the immigration arrest of a Columbia University activist.
Chaotic scenes showed NYPD officers dragging out members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace on Thursday.
Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident who is married to an American citizen and who hasn’t been charged with breaking any laws, was arrested outside his New York City apartment on Saturday and faces deportation.
President Donald Trump has said Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come” and vowed on social media to deport students who he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
However, Khalil’s supporters say his arrest is an attack on free speech, and protests have been staged elsewhere in New York City and around the country. Hundreds demonstrated Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse during a brief hearing on his case.
At Thursday’s Trump Tower protest, police, who were staged inside and outside the Fifth Avenue building, just off Central Park, ahead of the demonstration, began arresting protesters after warning them to leave.
The demonstrators – who wore red shirts reading “Jews say stop arming Israel” and carried banners reading “Opposing fascism is a Jewish tradition” and “Fight Nazis not students” – chanted “Bring Mahmoud home now!”
Khalil, 30, was being detained at an immigration detention center in Louisiana.
Columbia University was a focal point of the pro-Palestinian protest movement that swept across U.S. college campuses last year and led to more than 2,000 arrests.Khalil, whose wife is pregnant with their first child, finished his requirements for a Columbia master’s degree in December.
Born in Syria, he is a grandson of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homeland, his lawyers said in a legal filing.
More follows …
