The lunacy continues at Columbia University—where a group of radical leftist students, some reportedly identifying as Jewish, chained themselves to a campus gate to protest the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a foreign-born agitator with alleged ties to Hamas.
Yes, that Hamas—the U.S.-designated terrorist organization responsible for murdering civilians, taking hostages, and destabilizing the Middle East.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Khalil was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in early March for leading on-campus activity aligned with Hamas, during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampment. Now, these protestors aren’t demanding due process or legal clarity—they’re demanding Columbia “name the trustee” who allegedly “snitched” to ICE.
You can’t make this up.
The so-called Columbia Palestine Solidarity Committee took to X (formerly Twitter), writing, “FREE MAHMOUD KHALIL. NAME THE TRUSTEE.” The post even declared that “Jewish students will not leave. They will remain chained to the campus gates until @Columbia University is held accountable.”
In other words: this isn’t about freedom or justice. It’s about protecting someone accused of pushing Hamas-aligned propaganda on an Ivy League campus—and punishing anyone who dared to sound the alarm.
Khalil, a Syrian national who entered the U.S. in 2022 and became a permanent resident in 2024, is now the martyr of the activist Left. But instead of focusing on whether the accusations have merit or respecting ICE’s role in upholding national security, these protestors are throwing tantrums and chaining themselves to gates, demanding a university out its own trustees.
Columbia University, for its part, said it had no role in Khalil’s arrest. A spokesperson told Fox News Digital that no trustee or leader requested ICE action or had any communication regarding enforcement on or near campus.
That didn’t stop the mob. Even after being cut loose and removed from the campus by Columbia’s public safety officers, protestors reassembled outside the gates—arms linked, shouting into bullhorns, and draping overpasses with banners that read “Free Mahmoud Khalil.”
It’s a scene more fitting for Gaza than for an Ivy League campus.
Let’s be clear about something: this isn’t peaceful protest. This is ideological extremism masquerading as student activism. The moment your cause involves defending someone accused of supporting a terrorist organization, you’ve forfeited any moral high ground.
Hamas is responsible for the murder of civilians, for weaponizing children, for hiding behind schools and hospitals. Supporting Hamas—or organizing activities aligned with them—isn’t a free speech issue. It’s a national security issue.
Khalil’s defenders may try to spin this as political persecution. But the facts are sobering: the Department of Homeland Security does not detain permanent residents lightly. If ICE arrested him, they likely had serious cause. The idea that Columbia should hand over the names of trustees to appease a mob borders on political blackmail.
And what does it say about the state of American academia when students are more outraged over the arrest of a foreign national with alleged terror ties than they are about Hamas’s grotesque crimes?
It says we’re in serious trouble.
Thankfully, President Trump’s administration isn’t playing games. While the Biden-era swamp let campuses become breeding grounds for anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric, the Trump team is restoring law, order, and the rule of law—even at the ivory tower’s doorstep.
The message to the Mahmoud Khalils of the world—and the universities that enable them—is simple: your radicalism is no longer welcome on American soil.
