Detained Columbia activist Khalil’s wife slams claims he is Hamas supporter

The wife of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who has been detained, has refuted claims that her husband supports Hamas and called the allegations made by the US government “ridiculous” and “disgusting.”

Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s pregnant wife, refuted claims made by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, was distributing Hamas flyers in an interview with US media outlet CBS on Sunday. The US government has not provided any proof to support this claim.

It’s ridiculous, in my opinion. That they’re using that tactic to make him look like the person he’s not, literally, is disgusting, she said.

As part of US President Donald Trump’s pledge to repress and, in some cases, deport students who participated in protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza that swept US university campuses last year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Khalil on March 8 and is holding him in a detention facility in Louisiana.

Trump&nbsp has accused the student protesters of engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” without providing any supporting proof for his assertions.

Khalil represented the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the Columbia campus last year as a spokesperson and negotiator. He has claimed that his arrest is a result of his exercising of his right to free speech, and that he has also described himself as a “political prisoner.”

Khalil’s deportation was temporarily halted on March 10 by a US district judge in New York, followed by an additional two days of extension of the deportation ban.

Abdalla told CBS, “He just doesn’t want his people to be murdered.” He opposes young children who lose limbs.

Under a rarely used provision of an immigration law that grants the secretary of state the authority to deport anyone who is found to have “adverse foreign policy consequences,” the Trump administration is pressing for Khalil’s deportation.

Khalil, a graduate student up until December, was previously a student without a student visa in the United States. Since then, he has a green card, making him a legal permanent resident.

More than 113, 000 Palestinians have been wounded and 50 000 have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, according to Gaza health officials on Sunday.

More than 670 people have been killed since then because of Israel breaking a nearly two-month-long ceasefire agreement with Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Discrimination in the US

Abdalla shed tears as she cried repeatedly for her and her husband to defend themselves from the accusations made by the Trump administration.

She claimed that it made her aware of the prejudice she had experienced in the US as a Muslim.