Overview
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani shared on Monday that he welcomed Mahmoud Khalil, his wife Noor, and their son to Gracie Mansion for an iftar on Sunday night.
- Khalil is a Syrian-born pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia University graduate student who became prominent during campus-linked demonstrations.
- ICE detained Khalil last year and flew him to a Louisiana facility for roughly three months during deportation efforts tied to his immigration paperwork.
- A three-judge federal panel in New Jersey ruled in June that Khalil should have been allowed to work while his immigration case proceeds.
- Federal officials have alleged green-card fraud and cited claims of support for Hamas under a rarely used foreign-policy statute, which Khalil’s supporters and the mayor counter as a free-speech issue.