By Jasper Ward
(Reuters) -Scores of people poured into the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Thursday to protest the arrest and detention of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, whom the Trump administration aims to deport over his pro-Palestinian activism.
The arrest of Khalil, who is in immigration custody in Louisiana after his arrest in New York on Saturday, has sparked an outcry by Democratic lawmakers, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories, and civil liberty advocates, among others.
Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as a progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization, carried out Thursday’s demonstration. The group said it was “taking over the Trump Tower to register our mass refusal.”
“We will not stand by as this fascist regime attempts to criminalize Palestinians and all those calling for an end to the Israeli government’s US-funded genocide of the Palestinian people,” the group said in a post on X.
Trump Tower, located on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, is home to the Trump Organization and where President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump own a penthouse apartment. Their son, Barron, has been living there since beginning his freshman year at New York University in the fall.
At least 150 protesters gathered at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the New York Police Department estimated. Images on social media showed demonstrators carrying signs saying: “FIGHT NAZIS NOT STUDENTS” and “FREE MAHMOUD FREE PALESTINE.”
Video showed police arresting some of the protesters. The NYPD said 98 arrests were made.
Kaz Daughtry, the deputy mayor for public safety, said on Fox News that there were no injuries and all the protesters had been removed from the building.
The Trump Organization did not immediately provide comment.
By arresting Khalil on Saturday, the Trump administration began fulfilling its campaign promise to deport foreign-born activists who participated in the wave of protests on U.S. college campuses last year. The protests followed Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which came after the October 2023 attack by the militant group Hamas, which controlled the Palestinian enclave.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States, has been a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian student movement at Columbia, perhaps the most prominent of the dozens of U.S. universities where demonstrations erupted last year.
Trump branded Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” on social media and has said his arrest is the first “of many to come.”
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)
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