Nearly 100 protesters were arrested Thursday after a sit-in at Trump Tower in New York City, calling for the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained by federal immigration agents over the weekend.
The voices of Jews from the organization for peace came to sit in and show hundreds of demonstrators packed into the building’s lobby. Some showed signs saying, “Fighting the Nazis, not students,” “Free Mahmoud Free Palestine,” and “Not able to deport the movement.”
I was able to hear many people reciting “free mahmoud.”
Protesters arrived at two groups around 11:30am, and police said some people were in their regular clothes before entering through side doors and others entered through the front and revealed “under the protest equipment.”
The protesters were wearing red t-shirts saying “arm Israel” and “not our name,” group spokesman Sonya Meyerson-Knox told NBC News. There were about 300 protesters, she said.
“My grandmother lost her cousin in the Holocaust. I grew up in these stories. I know what happens when the authoritarian regime starts targeting people, start acquiring them at night, separate their families and start scapegoing,” she said. “And we know that, as we have seen so often in our history, we protest and lose all that more fear happens, and we are a step to take this step from here on what happens.
“Because otherwise we can’t do it tomorrow,” she added.
Protesters hung two banners along the Golden Escalator Donald Trump before police arrived, starting his first presidential election in 2015 and beginning to remove protesters from the building.
Police said 98 people were arrested on suspicion of trespassing, obstructing the government’s government and resisting arrest. There was no injury or damage to the property, police said.
The protesters in detention were handcuffed in white zip ties and escorted by police vehicles and empty city buses.
They cried out “Free Palestine” and “Free Mahmoud” as they were kicked out of the golden building alongside Tiffany & Company, St. Laurent, Dolce & Gabbana and other luxury retailers.
Some onlookers cheered on the arrested and joined the chant, while others appeared to be troubled by pedestrian confusion.
Standing across the street, 60-year-old Nina Leben was a lifelong New Yorker whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, and she felt disgusted. She called the protest “anti-American.”
“When we bring people into this country, they must promise that they are not opposed to our government and against our democracy,” she said.
Police drove along with protesters around 1:40pm and headed downtown.
The Jewish Voice for Peace said it “requires the Trump administration to release Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil from ice detention.”
“Mahmoud’s detention further demonstrates that we are on the verge of a complete acquisition by the oppressive authoritarian regime,” the group said in a statement.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Columbia University alumnus and green card holder Halil, 30, on Saturday. His lawyer, Amy Greer, said he was told his student visa had been revoked.
Unnamed Halil’s wife says she went home when the ice agents stood up to them. She said they had no warrants shown and the agent told her to go to the apartment or arrest her.
Halil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, said the ordeal was “traumatized.”
“U.S. immigrants tore my soul from me,” she said in a statement released Tuesday through a spokesman working on the incident. “Instead of assembling our nursery and washing baby clothes in anticipation of the first child, I am sitting in our apartment thinking when Mahmoud would have the opportunity to call me from the detention center.”
Halil is held at a Louisiana immigration detention facility. In addition to his sit-in at Trump Tower, there have also been several other protests over the past few days denounced his arrest.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation as the court challenged his arrest and considered filings that it planned to deport.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was detained in cooperation with ICE and the State Department in order to support Trump’s “administrative order banning anti-Semitism.” A spokesperson said Halil “led activities in line with Hamas, the designated terrorist organization.”
Trump and his administration have not provided evidence of the allegations.
On Thursday, the New York chapter of the American Council for Islamic Relations announced a lawsuit against Colombia over “an obvious willingness to comply with Congress’s request to disclose private student records.”
“Our lawsuits seek to protect the constitutional rights of students who should not be exposed to political intimidation or invasive government overreach. We will continue to fight for the privacy and dignity of all students,” Carey said.
