Supporters of Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, briefly shutdown the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge on Sunday afternoon as part of a protest against his detainment by federal immigration authorities.
Demonstrators rallied around 2 p.m. on the steps of the Boston Public Library before marching down Newbury Street to Massachusetts Avenue, according to social media posts by the Boston Coalition for Palestine. The group stopped traffic on the bridge for approximately 10 minutes before moving to an area of Memorial Drive in front of MIT, a State Police spokesperson said.
Rally speakers demanded the release of Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University until this past December who was arrested by ICE last week, sparking protests in cities across the country.
Khalil often became the “public face” of student protests on Columbia’s campus last spring against Israel’s military actions in Gaza, his lawyers wrote in a lawsuit filed Thursday seeking his immediate release
Khalil, who has a green card, is a legal resident. He is also married to a US citizen and has no criminal record. At the time of his arrest, Khalil and his wife had returned to Columbia’s residential housing, where they lived, from dinner at a friend’s house, according to the lawsuit.
Advertisement
“The tradition of being a Palestinian refugee of only knowing that his destiny in life time and time and time again is to fight for Palestine, so that one day he, amongst a sea of Palestinians, may return in a day of glory, and that is what we continue to fight for,” one speaker said, according to video posted to social media.
In court papers, Justice Department lawyers said Khalil was detained under a law allowing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to remove someone from the country if he has reasonable grounds to believe their presence or activities would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.
Thousands of people across the country have staged demonstrations against Khalil’s detainment without charges, including at Harvard University and University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Protesters at the march in Boston on Sunday also demanded an end to Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian student activists in general, accusing the Trump administration of attacking free speech. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come,” vowing on social media to deport students he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”
Advertisement
The demonstration was co-organized by Palestinian Youth Movement Boston in collaboration with activist groups at UMass Amherst, Lowell, and Boston.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.