Hartford rally held in support of pro-Palestinian activist facing deportation
Mahmoud Khalil helped lead protests at Columbia University last year over the Israel-Hamas war.
Author: Angelo Bavaro (FOX61)
Published: 11:00 PM EDT March 12, 2025
Updated: 11:00 PM EDT March 12, 2025
HARTFORD, Conn. — A rush hour rally drew dozens of people in Hartford Wednesday evening in support of the pro-Palestinian activist who is being threatened with deportation by the Trump administration.
Mahmoud Khalil helped lead protests at Columbia University last year over the Israel-Hamas war.
“We consider Khalil to be a member of our community, a member of our movement, and his fate is our fate,” said Daniel Piper with the Connecticut Labor for Palestine. The group was one of the organizers of the rally outside the Federal Building on Main Street in Downtown Hartford.
Piper said the rally was held in defense of the right to free speech and organize.
“If we don’t defend him now, we are going to see massive attacks on free speech, on people organizing, on people fighting for any improvement on their conditions,” Piper said.
Khalil, a lawful U.S. resident who was a graduate student at Columbia until December, was detained Saturday by federal immigration agents in New York and flown to an immigration jail in Louisiana. The Trump administration is now looking to deport the 30-year-old green card holder who’s married to a U.S. citizen.
“I’m Puerto Rican, my grandparents aren’t originally from this country and there’s a lot going on in the Trump administration that’s jeopardizing the lives of not just me, but clearly for the lives of international students,” said rallygoer Patch Bowen from Windsor.
Khalil has become the face of Trump’s crackdown on campus protests last spring. In a social media post, the president said the arrest is the first “of many to come.”
“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted, college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus. But also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt during a press briefing Tuesday.
This week, the U.S. Department of Education said it’s investigating 60 colleges and universities over antisemitism allegations and the Trump administration is threatening to take away federal funding.
One of those universities is Yale, which was also a site of protests last year.
“There is a long history of higher education being at the forefront of revolution, of dissent. We’ve seen it throughout history. Vietnam War, right?” said Audra King with Connecticut Labor for Palestine.
“Yale has long been committed to combating antisemitism and strives to ensure that its Jewish community, along with all communities at Yale, are treated with dignity, respect, and compassion. Antisemitism is inconsistent with Yale’s values and principles and has no place in our community,” said a spokesperson for Yale in a statement.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced it’s canceling about $400 million dollars in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University.
Angelo Bavaro is an anchor and reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at abavaro@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook and X.
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