Noor Abdallah has argued for the Trump administration that Khalil supports Hamas’ “silly” and “nasty.”
The wife of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has rebutted claims that her husband is a Hamas supporter, calling the accusations by the US government “silly” and “nasty.”
In an interview with US media outlet CBS released Sunday, Halil’s pregnant wife Noor Abdallah denied claims by White House press secretary Karolyn Leavitt that Halil, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, is distributing Hamas Flyers. No evidence has been presented to support the allegation by the US government.
“I think it’s ridiculous. I hate it… that’s the tactic they use to make him look like this guy, that’s not literal,” she said.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Halil on March 8th and detained him in a Louisiana detention facility. A student who joined Israel’s protests against the Gaza War last year as part of President Donald Trump’s pledge and, in some cases, deportees.
Without providing evidence to support these claims, Trump accused student protesters of participating in “professional terrorist, anti-Semitism and anti-American activities.”
Halil served as a spokesman and negotiator for pro-Palestinian protesters at the Columbia campus last year. He said his detention was the result of exercising his right to freedom of speech, and described himself as a “political prisoner.”
On March 10, a US district judge in New York temporarily blocked Halil’s deportation and extended the ban two days later.
“It’s very easy. He just doesn’t want his people to be murdered,” Abdallah told CBS. “He doesn’t want to see little kids losing their limbs.”
The Trump administration is pushing for banishing Halil under a rarely used provision of immigration law that gives the Secretary of State to eliminate non-citizens whose presence in the United States is considered “adverse foreign policy effects.”
A graduate student until December, Halil previously was in the US on a student visa, but has since obtained a green card and made him a legal permanent resident of the country.
The number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its war with Gaza in October 2023 has exceeded 50,000, with over 113,000 injured, Gaza health officials said on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Israel breached a nearly two-month ceasefire agreement with Hamas, intensifying its attack on Gaza, killing more than 670 people since then, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Discrimination in the US
Clearing her tears, Abdallah expressed her dissatisfaction with the repeated need to protect herself and her husband against the Trump administration’s accusations.
She said it reminded her of the discrimination she faced as a Muslim in the United States.
“The other day in New York, my husband and I were walking around and someone called me a ‘terrorist’,” she said. “I think most Muslims in this country have something to do with that. That doesn’t matter what I say… that’s what they think about me.”
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