Hundreds of demonstrators occupied Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday to protest President Donald Trump’s detention and attempted deportation of former Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Activists from Jewish Voice for Peace donned matching shirts reading “not in our name” and flooded the building’s lobby to stage a sit-in.
JVP spokesperson Sonya Meyerson-Knox claimed that roughly 300 Jewish and non-Jewish demonstrators attended the protest in solidarity with Khalil. Protesters charged Trump and his administration with unlawfully detaining Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, over his activism on Columbia’s campus. The Trump administration has alleged without evidence that the green card holder is a supporter of Hamas.
Khalil was a lead negotiator for students participating in encampments at Columbia in support of Gaza last spring. In a hearing on Wednesday, a judge ruled he could stay in federal custody for the time being, though he can’t yet be deported.
The sit-in led to mass arrests of protesters. New York Police Department declined to provide arrest figures to Salon, though Meyerson-Knox told NBC News that police removed 100 or so individuals.
In a statement earlier this week, JVP demanded Khalil be released and denounced the crackdown on free speech “using the guise of fighting antisemitism.”
“The Trump administration’s outrageous detention of Mahmoud Khalil is designed to sow terror among students and immigrant communities in order to silence people calling for Palestinian freedom and to feed the mass deportation machine,” the group said, adding that Khalil’s detention was “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Right-wing commentators and elected officials denounced the protest on X, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said President Trump should press charges against the peaceful protestors.
“I know the owner of that building and he will definitely be pressing charges,” Greene, who has a storied history of amplifying antisemitic conspiracy theories, wrote. “FAFO.”
Read more
about Trump’s attacks on protests
