Trump's week in review: Challenging universal injunctions, arresting pro-Hamas protesters

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Saturday, March 15, 2025

Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia's Campus barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York City. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched around the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' at Columbia University as a 2 P.M. deadline to clear the encampment given to students by the university passed. The students were given a suspension warning if they do not meet the deadline. Columbia students were the first to erect an encampment in support of Palestine, with students demanding that the school divest from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. — Demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia's Campus barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building which has been occupied in past student movements, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York City. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched around the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Columbia University as a 2 P.M. deadline to clear the encampment given to students by the university passed. The students were given a suspension warning if they do not meet the deadline. Columbia students were the first to erect an encampment in support of Palestine, with students demanding that the school divest from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, where more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. | Getty Images/Alex Kent

3. Trump administration arrests anti-Israel student activists

In a statement published Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian student involved in protests expressing support for the terrorist organization Hamas at Columbia University last year. The Trump administration cited an overstayed visa as the reason for the arrest and noted that she was previously arrested during the protests.

A DHS statement released five days earlier announced that ICE had arrested Mahmoud Khalil in coordination with the U.S. Department of State for leading activities linked to Hamas while attending Columbia University as a graduate student.

The arrest of Khalil, a green card holder who now faces the prospect of deportation, comes after Trump signed an executive order to combat the rise of antisemitism on college campuses shortly after taking office in January.

One aspect of the executive order calls on the heads of executive agencies to provide “recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3),” which identifies individuals who engage in anarchy or terrorism as inadmissible to the U.S.

The executive order sought to familiarize colleges and universities with the statute so they could “monitor for and report activities taken by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

A particularly intense protest took place at Columbia University last year, where students protested the educational institution’s ties to Israel amid that country’s ongoing conflict with Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks perpetrated by Hamas. Student protesters barricaded themselves in a building and engaged in vandalism. Their actions are credited with preventing students from attending class and leaving their dorm rooms.

Video footage shared by the advocacy group Canary Mission shows Khalil leading a protest at the Columbia University-affiliated Barnard College where student activists took over a library and handed out pamphlets from the “Hamas Media Office” that reportedly justified the Oct. 7 attacks.