Activists Storm Trump Tower to Protest the Arrest of Columbia Grad Student Mahmoud Khalil

The New York Police Department has made multiple arrests after dozens of activists swarmed Trump Tower to protest the immigration arrest of a Columbia University activist. Chaotic scenes showed NYPD officers dragging out members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace on Thursday. Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident who is married to an American citizen and who hasn't been charged with breaking any laws, was arrested outside his New York City apartment on Saturday and faces deportation. President Donald Trump has said Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come” and vowed on social media to deport students who he said engage in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

Dozens of protesters are reportedly occupying in and around Trump Tower in support of Mahmoud Khalil. Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. resident, was arrested in New York Saturday and later transferred to an immigration detention center in Louisiana. The Trump administration has been actively seeking his deportation under a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows for removal on foreign policy grounds.

A Left-wing protest group has occupied Trump Tower in New York following the attempted deportation of a pro-Palestinian activist. Mahmoud Khalil was apprehended by immigration authorities last week after spearheading anti-Israel protests as a graduate student at Columbia University in 2024. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as the “largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organisation in the world”, on Thursday protested inside Trump Tower, which is owned by the president. Footage shows dozens of activists wearing red shirts outside the Trump Grill on the building’s ground floor, chanting: “Free Mahmoud, free them all.”