Uncovering Foreign Nationals

On January 30, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to combat antisemitism. The order promised “immediate action” by the Justice Department “to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism” in colleges and universities.

Significantly, the order calls both for the removal of foreigners who violate U.S. laws and the deportation of sympathizers of Hamas, including the revocation of student visas and green cards:

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.”

True to the order, on March 8, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began the process, arresting Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia University, for leading activities "aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization."

See more on Mahmoud Khalil below

Immigration Law

Trump’s executive order follows immigration and deportation laws, which outline how foreigners supporting Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, forfeit their rights to remain in America.

While the arrest of Khalil is being spun by Hamas supporters in America as a free speech issue, it is not. The U.S. government has every right to deport a foreigner who engages in illegal activity and/or breaks the conditions of their student visa or green card.

For example, the “Deportable Aliens” law allows the deportation of lawful permanent residents who are "representative[s]" of a "political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.”

The same law even allows for the denaturalization and deportation of naturalized American citizens for serious offenses involving national security and terrorism.

In addition, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states that “an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

As per the INA, foreigners, including green card holders, do not need to be convicted of something to be “removable,” according to Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, a professor at Cornell Law School who teaches immigration law.

Mahmoud Khalil

While in graduate school at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil served as the lead negotiator for the encampment during the spring of 2024, including acting as the spokesperson for the violent Hamilton Hall takeover.

The encampment, the takeover of Hamilton Hall and the plethora of post-October 7, 2023 pro-Hamas activities were coordinated and run by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of over 100 pro-Hamas student groups that sprang into action in November 2023 after Columbia suspended the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

As the representative of a group that “endorses or espouses” terrorist activity, Khalil is subject to the Deportable Aliens law. On March 8, 2025, Khalil became the first target of Trump’s executive order when ICE officials arrested him for activities "aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization."

CUAD has been accurately described as a group that seeks the "total eradication of Western civilization." On March 24, 2024, CUAD co-organized a pro-terror event titled “Palestinian Resistance 101” that hosted Khaled Barakat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a foreign terror organization.

As one of the leaders of CUAD, Khalil has prominently featured in Columbia’s pro-Hamas movement.

• Shortly after the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas, Khalil protested in favor of the terrorist group, calling for the complete eradication of the state of Israel.
• On April 30, 2024, Columbia suspended Khalil for his involvement in the illegal encampment organized by CUAD. (Two days later, the administration reversed the suspension.)
• On October 7, 2024, the first anniversary of the massacre, Khalil was a leader in CUAD’s pro-Hamas protest at Columbia. The next day, CUAD wrote, referring to the protest and Hamas terror acts, that it was necessary to "bring the war home," meaning to America.
• Despite having graduated, Khalil played a front-and-center role in the February 26, 2025, occupation of Barnard’s Milstein Hall and the subsequent sit-in at the library, where Hamas propaganda materials were distributed.
• On March 5, 2025, Khalil served as a negotiator for pro-Hamas CUAD protesters who occupied the library lobby at Barnard College to protest the suspension of two Barnard students. The students stormed the first day of a History of Modern Israel class taught by an Israeli professor at Columbia on January 21, 2025.
  
  The students disrupted the class and distributed pro-Hamas fliers, including one depicting a jackboot squashing a Jewish star and another that read "DEATH TO AMERICA."

For more information on the anti-Israel movement’s war on America, check Canary Mission’s report “Bringing the War Home”

Mohsen Mahdawi

Mohsen Mahdawi was born in Al-Faria, a town under Palestinian Authority control and studied computer engineering at Birzeit University, an institution near Ramallah whose student body is virulently pro-Hamas.

Mahdawi moved to the United States in 2014 and attended Columbia University from 2021 until 2024. There, he was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and served as co-president of DAR Palestine at Columbia University, Columbia’s Palestinian student union.

Following Columbia SJP’s suspension by the university in November 2023, DAR joined the pro-Hamas CUAD coalition.

Mahdawi has blamed Israel for the October 7 Hamas terror attack and co-authored a statement that justified terrorism against Jews and Israelis.

In November 2023, Mahdawi joined Nerdeen Kiswani, co-founder and leader of the pro-terror activist group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and leading WOL activist Abdullah Akl to support terrorism and call for Israel’s destruction.

According to media sources, Mahdawi has been entered into a U.S. government deportation database.

Mohamed Abdou

Former Columbia visiting professor Mohamed Abdou, who holds Canadian and Egyptian citizenship, openly declared his support for Hamas and the terror group’s October 7 massacre of Israelis, saying, “I might be with Hamas and support the resistance, absolutely.”

Abdou, who also participated in the Columbia encampment, is virulently anti-American. At a February 2024 event at Columbia, Abdou said, “Above all, I don’t pledge allegiance to no American flag, let alone to no [American] constitution. I don’t call myself an American and I have never called myself a Canadian.”

Abdou was affiliated with the pro-terror campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) while at Columbia and previously organized for the group for two years while he was at Cornell University.

On March 5, 2025, Abdou tweeted he was back in Egypt.

Audra Simpson

Canadian citizen Audra Simpson was a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University and a core faculty member of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

As of March 13, 2025, Simpson no longer appears in Columbia’s Faculty List.

Simpson participated in the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia, joining with other faculty members who donned orange vests and locked arms to prevent Jewish students from entering the campus. The “orange vests” also protected pro-Hamas students from being disciplined by the administration.

After the October 7 massacre, Simpon signed a petition supporting the violent pro-Hamas student groups Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The petition also denounced “Israel’s violence.”

Simpson has endorsed the academic and cultural boycott of Israel and, in 2021, signed a call to action as part of a targeted attack on Jewish trustees of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

In 2015, she delivered a paper at the 7th International Conference of Critical Geography in Ramallah in which she praised the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat’s “achievement.”

Abdul Kayum Ahmed

Abdul Kayum Ahmed, a former director at George Soros's Open Society Foundations and professor of Public Health at Columbia, spoke to students at a vigil for the “fallen .. [and] martyred in Gaza.” At the vigil, Ahmed called the pro-Hamas protesters “students who have become our teachers.”

Bringing his five-year-old son, Ahmed made a solidarity visit to Columbia’s encampment to which he donated books.

In April 2024, Ahmed received a letter of non-renewal from Columbia’s School of Public Health, effective January 1, 2025. As of November 2024, Ahmed was affiliated with New York University’s (NYU) chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP).

Ahmed has a history of indoctrinating his students – both college- and high school-aged – with false, antisemitic narratives about Israel and inciting illegal disruptions and protests in support of Hamas. His exploits are well documented in a lawsuit against Columbia brought by students charging the university with failure to address the rampant antisemitism at the university.

Ahmed is also the author of an anti-Israel children’s book, A is for Amandla: The ABC Guide for Young Revolutionaries [and their parents].

Saphe Shamoun

Columbia PhD student Saphe Shamoun is from Aleppo, Syria. He is in his fourth year of doctoral studies at Columbia in the Department of Anthropology. Shamoun was previously an instructor at Barnard College.

As of March 13, 2025, Shamoun was not listed in Columbia’s directory of PhD Anthropology students.

Shamoun is a DJ and the co-founder of Laylit, an event series celebrating Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) music and culture based in New York City and Montreal.

On April 19, 2024, Shamoun brought his vibe to the Columbia encampment, playing the traditional Middle-Eastern darbuka at the pro-Hamas encampment.

He participated in a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas massacre and in a protest in April 2024, calling for the complete destruction of Israel.

A month after the October 7 massacre, Shamoun signed another statement against Israel, which falsely accused Israel of using chemical weapons against the Palestinians and cutting off electricity, food and water to the population.

Shamoun signed onto a DJ’s Against Apartheid open letter, which justified the October 7 Hamas massacre.

He is also a signatory to a September 2022 petition that claimed Israel is “committed to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.”

Momodou Taal

Momodou Taal is a British-Gambian PhD student at Cornell University. In 2024, Cornell University suspended Taal twice, the first time for leading anti-Israel encampment protests and the second time for disrupting a campus event in support of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement.

At an October 18, 2023 rally, Taal declared, "I condemn the ethno-fascist state that calls itself Israel…I condemn in no uncertain terms Zionism."

In a now-deleted X post, Taal wrote on January 13, 2024, "Axis of Evil: Israel, USA and United Kingdom."

Taal faced potential deportation when Cornell threatened to expel him, which would have resulted in the loss of his F-1 student visa. However, after appealing the university's decision, on October 11, 2024, interim provost John Siliciano ruled in Taal's favor, allowing him to maintain his enrollment and visa status.

Taal was allowed to complete his degree in the Cornell Africana Studies program but was barred from teaching at Cornell or entering the campus.