Dawn Images

On March 9, 2025, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested from his residence at New York’s Columbia University by agents of the US Department of Homeland Security for participating in protests against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.

On March 9, 2026, he was at Gracie Mansion — the official residence of the mayor of New York City — with his wife and son, breaking his fast with Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji. The mayor shared a picture of the intimate iftar on his Instagram account.

In his caption, Mamdani said the past year had one of “profound hardship and profound courage” for Khalil, writing how the student activist had been “detained by federal agents, flown to Louisiana, and then held in an ICE facility for months”. In that time, he said, Khalil was “forced to miss the birth of his first child”.

The mayor said all this was a result of the activist “exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine”.

In the face of that cruelty, Mamdani wrote, there was beauty to be found as the citizens of New York rose up for Khalil, which won him his freedom and reunited him with his child. The mayor said he and Duwaji were “honoured” to host the activist and his family.

Mamdani said Khalil was “a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City”.

The activist was one of the first to be detained during President Donald Trump’s second term for protesting against Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza which killed over 72,000 Palestinians.

The president had included the arrest of pro-Palestinian students among his campaign promises when running for office. Khalil’s arrest was widely condemned by rights groups, academics and ordinary Americans.

The activist, whose wife is a US citizen, was threatened with deportation before a series of court battles led to his release in June. A subsequent appeal has since overturned the ruling which released him, but Khalil has yet to be arrested again by US law enforcement.