The arrest of a former Columbia University graduate student who gained prominence amid that campus’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations has divided the American Jewish community, which finds itself trying to reconcile a longstanding focus on Jewish safety and support for Israel with a historical commitment to civil liberties.
Immigration authorities’ detention of the activist, Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident, has satisfied some American Jews who had wished for aggressive action from Columbia in recent months as protest groups praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which the group killed about 1,200 people and abducted 250, and as masked protesters disrupted classes and occupied university buildings.
A few hours after news broke on Sunday of the arrest of Mr. Khalil, who has not been accused of having contact with Hamas, the Anti-Defamation League, a century-old organization committed to fighting antisemitism, released a statement applauding the “swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations.”
But the raid chilled other American Jews — among them ones who consider themselves supporters of Israel and ones troubled primarily by Israel’s military response, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including many women and children. They see their security as inextricably bound up with that of other minority groups.
“Any Jew who thinks this is going to start and stop with a few Palestinian activists is fooling themselves,” Amy Spitalnick, who runs the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and identifies as a progressive Zionist, said on social media on Monday morning. “Our community should not be used as an excuse to upend democracy & the rule of law.”
Mr. Khalil, who is married to an American citizen, was detained on Saturday by federal immigration officers, in a striking escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on what it sees as a scourge of antisemitism on college campuses. He is being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana. A federal judge in Manhattan on Monday ordered the government not to deport Mr. Khalil while the judge reviewed legal filings challenging his detention.
Mr. Khalil’s arrest sparked alarm among immigration advocates and lawyers about how the Trump administration will justify revoking his green card, an unusual step that, in a vast majority of cases, follows a criminal conviction.
On Monday, President Trump said on social media that the detention represented “the first arrest of many to come.” He called Mr. Khalil “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.” The White House’s X account wrote, “SHALOM, MAHMOUD,” using the Hebrew word for “goodbye” as well as “hello” and “peace.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media after the arrest that he planned to revoke “the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” Mr. Khalil’s precise orientation with the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has spoken approvingly of Hamas’s attack, is unclear. He has described his role to reporters as a negotiator and spokesman.
If the Trump administration and its partisans were united in supporting the raid, the American Jewish community, in whose name Mr. Trump appeared to say he was acting, was notably divided.
On one side were some Jewish groups like the A.D.L., which saw Hamas’s attack on Israel as inaugurating a new era of heightened antisemitism that required “bold, brave” responses.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, favorably contrasted the arrest in a statement with previous “drawn-out bureaucratic processes” that he said failed to address campus antisemitism. “New, aggressive, and legal tactics are clearly needed,” he said.
Ari Shrage, the co-founder of the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, said the group’s criticism of campus protests and its praise of Mr. Khalil’s arrest should not be mistaken for a desire to crack down on speech.
“We have a problem with students taking over buildings, which prevents students from going to class, and distributing pro-Hamas materials which advocate for violence against Jews,” he said.
But for several left-wing Jewish groups, the arrest signaled creeping authoritarianism.
“It is utterly despicable that they are carrying out this authoritarian lurch under the guise of fighting for Jewish safety,” Eva Borgwardt, the national spokesperson for IfNotNow, a Jewish group that is often critical of Israel, said of the Trump administration.
Sophie Ellman-Golan, the director of strategic communications for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, added, “Jews, regardless of where they stand on political activism and organizing, feel in their bones how deeply dangerous this is.”
That sentiment was echoed during a news conference near Columbia on Monday evening by several Jewish professors and activists who accused the Trump administration of using genuine antisemitism as a pretext to further its goals of deportation and limiting free speech.
“What’s happening on this campus — or to this campus — is not about protecting Jews,” said Marianne Hirsch, a retired English professor and Holocaust scholar whose parents were Holocaust survivors. “Pro-Palestinian speech and activism does not mean a lack of safety for Jews,” she added.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who has supported the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, said in an interview that Mr. Khalil, whom he knows, is “dedicated to negotiation, mediation and finding peaceful agreements to conflicts.”
Professor Howley also noted that Mr. Khalil did not obscure his identity. Opponents of the protests, including the A.D.L., have blamed some protesters for wearing masks to hide their faces. Several faculty members even proposed a universitywide ban on face coverings at classes and other events.
But Mr. Khalil’s is a familiar face to critics and supporters alike. Over the past week, Mr. Khalil has been singled out on social media by critics of the protests.
The dispute among Jewish organizations represents more than just the general polarization of American life. Mr. Khalil’s case highlights fundamental tensions in the American Jewish community’s sense of how best to ensure its own security.
The American Jewish establishment has long defended civil liberties and the rule of law, seeing them as crucial bulwarks against the kinds of threats that many Jews fled Europe and elsewhere to escape. But American Jews are also vigilant against antisemitism, and for many people, supporting Israel has long been central and viewed as part of that vigilance.
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, said that defending Jews from supporters of Hamas — designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government, he noted — is of paramount concern.
At the same time, he argued for protecting civil liberties. “What I believe,” he said, “is what the mainstream of the American Jewish community believes. We have always been at the vanguard of free speech.”
Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus Project, a progressive Jewish group, expressed concern that the arrest and promised crackdown would widen divides between Jews and other minority groups.
“There has never been a safer and more flourishing experience than the American Jewish experience, living as a free people in an open society,” he said. “Anything that endangers that, or our relationships with other Americans — those are all Jewish concerns.”
Columbia became the epicenter of university protests against the war in Gaza last year when students set up a tent city on a campus lawn.
Some Jewish students joined the protests, but others said the encampments made them question their safety and sense of belonging on campus. A scathing report on antisemitism at Columbia found that some Jewish students, particularly more religious ones who wore visible markers of their faith like head coverings, had been intimidated, harassed and physically attacked by protesters.
“Particular aspersions cast upon Jewish and Israeli students resonate with the history of antisemitism and, given what we know about the past, such representations can lead to further acts of aggression and exclusion,” the report’s authors wrote last summer.
Nor did the confrontational protests end last school year. In January, four masked protesters entered a class on the history of Israel taught by an Israeli professor. They accused Columbia of “normalizing genocide” and handed out antisemitic fliers.
Two of those students were expelled in February, touching off another round of protests at Barnard College, the affiliated women’s college across the street from Columbia’s main campus. Videos of an unmasked Mr. Khalil at the sit-in were soon circulated on social media among critics of Columbia’s protest movement, with some calling for him to be deported.
Shayla Colon and Sharla Steinman contributed reporting.