US alleges Columbia University student covered up his work for UNRWA

The US government has alleged that Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil withheld that he worked for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in his visa application, saying that should be grounds for deportation, Reuters has reported.

UNRWA provides food, education and healthcare to Palestinian refugees and has become a flashpoint in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Israel contends that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas cross-border incursion on 7 October, 2023, leading the US to halt funding for the agency. UNRWA employs around 32,000 people and has said that Israel has provided no evidence for its claim.

The Trump administration detained Khalil on 8 March. He is a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian campus protests that rocked the New York City campus last year. He was first detained in New Jersey, and then sent to a detention centre in Louisiana as efforts were being made to deport him, even though he wasn’t charged with committing any crime.

The case has drawn attention as a test of free speech rights, with supporters of Khalil saying that he was targeted for publicly disagreeing with US policy on Israel and its occupation of Gaza. Khalil has called himself a politicial prisoner in a letter dictated to his family by phone.

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The US administration alleges that Khalil’s presence or activities in the country would have serious foreign policy consequences.

A judge has ordered that Khalil should not be deported while his lawsuit challenging his detention, known as a habeas petition, is heard in another federal court.

Khalil, a native of Syria and citizen of Algeria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022 and later filed to become a permanent resident in 2024. He is married to a US citizen.

In a court brief dated Sunday, the US government outlined its arguments for keeping Khalil in custody while his removal proceedings continue, arguing first that the US District Court in New Jersey, where the habeas case is being heard, lacked jurisdiction. The brief also says that Khalil “withheld membership in certain organisations” which should be grounds for his deportation.

It references a 17 March document in his deportation case that informed Khalil that he could be removed because he failed to disclose that he was a political officer of UNRWA in 2023.

The UN said in August that an investigation found that nine of the agency’s 32,000 staff members “may have been” involved in the 7 October attack.

The US court notice also accuses Khalil of leaving off his visa application that he worked for the Syria office in the British Embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

Attorneys for Khalil did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, one attorney, Ramie Kassem, a co-director of the legal clinic CLEAR, was quoted in the New York Times as saying the new deportation grounds were “patently weak and pretextual.”

According to the NYT, Kassem said: “That the government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr Khalil for his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives.”

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