Many American Jews have harshly condemned Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.

Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.

This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.

Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)

The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.

A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.

The group claims to have “documentation, including tapes, social media and more” to support their actions. It claims to be sharing names with several high-ranking officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the White House homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller; and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, among others.

The White House and state department did not respond to questions about whether they are working with Betar or other groups to identify students for deportation.

Ross Glick, who was the executive director of the US chapter of Betar until last month, told the Guardian that the list began forming last fall. He noted that when they started compiling names, it was unclear who the next president would be, but that the change in administrations had been beneficial to their initiative.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to deport foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and frequently framed demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza as expressions of support for Hamas. Last week, it was reported that the US state department plans to use AI to identify foreign students for deportation.

The arrest of Khalil last week, who served as a lead negotiator for the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University, aligned with Trump’s executive order aimed at combatting antisemitism. An accompanying fact sheet pledged the administration would cancel the student visas of those identified as “Hamas sympathizers” and deport those who participated in “pro-jihadist protests”.

After the election, Glick said he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including the Democratic senator John Fetterman and aides to the Republican senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford, all of whom, he said, supported the efforts.

In a phone call this week, Glick said he discussed Khalil with Cruz in Washington DC just days before he was arrested.

Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting with Glick.

Ted Cruz and Ross Glick. Photograph: Courtesy of Ross Glick

Glick said that the individuals on Betar’s list were identified through tips from students, faculty and staff on these campuses, along with social media research. He also claimed he had received support from “collaborators” who use “facial recognition AI-based technology” to help identify protesters that can even identify people wearing face coverings. He declined to elaborate on the specific technology used.

Glick mentioned that in recent months he had been inundated with messages from students, professors and university administrators across the country, all providing him with information on protesters’ identities. He said that he vetted the legitimacy of those tips and that he believed Khalil and other pro-Palestinian protesters were “promoting the eradication, the destruction and the devolution of western civilization”.

Glick described Khalil as an “operative”. When asked who he was an operative for, he responded: “Well, that has to be determined.”

Khalil is being held in a Louisiana detention center after being moved from New York. His detention is being challenged in a Manhattan federal court.

The arrest has sparked outrage and alarm from free-speech advocates who see the move to deport Khalil as a flagrant violation of his free speech rights and on Wednesday, protests erupted outside the Manhattan courthouse, where hundreds gathered demanding his freedom.

Betar is not alone in its efforts to support Trump’s deportation campaign, an effort that has divided American Jews in whose name the administration is purporting to act.

In the days leading up to his arrest, videos featuring Khalil and others at a sit-in at Barnard against the expulsion of two students who disrupted a class on Israel began circulating on social media.

Pro-Israel social-media accounts, including that of Shai Davidai, a vocal assistant professor at Columbia’s business school who was temporarily barred from campus last year after the school said he repeatedly intimidated and harassed university employees, identified Khalil and tagged Rubio in posts urging him to revoke his visa and deport him.

The video of Khalil that was circulating was first posted by Canary Mission, an online database that publishes the names and personal information of people that it considers to be anti-Israel or antisemitic, focusing mainly on those at universities across the US.

When Khalil was arrested, Canary Mission said that it was “delighted that our exposure of Mahmoud Khalil’s hatred has led to such deserved consequences”, adding that it had “more Columbia news on its way”.

On Monday afternoon, Canary Mission released a video naming five other students and faculty it believes should be deported.

It was revealed this week by Zeteo that Khalil had emailed Columbia University the day before his arrest, appealing for protection and telling the university’s interim president that he was being subjected to a “dehumanizing doxxing campaign” that week led by Davidai and David Lederer, a Columbia student.

“Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats,” Khalil said.

He added: “I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that Ice or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”

In another email, Khalil reportedly cited a threatening post by Betar, in which the group claimed he said: “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Khalil “unequivocally” denied ever saying that.

In that post, Betar wrote that Ice⁩ was “aware of his home address and whereabouts” and said it had “provided all his information to multiple contacts”.

After the arrest, Karoline Leavitt, the spokesperson for the White House, said that Columbia University had been given the “names of other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity” but said that the school was “refusing to help DHS identify those individuals on campus”.

‘A moment of reckoning’

Khalil’s arrest has divided American Jews, many of whom have harshly condemned the activist’s arrest.

The ADL, a group that describes its focus as fighting antisemitism and all forms of hate and that is also known to view campus protests as antisemitic, welcomed the escalation and said it appreciated “the Trump administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism.

“Obviously, any deportation action or revocation of a Green Card or visa must be undertaken in alignment with required due process protections,” the group said. It added: “We also hope that this action serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere.”

But many mainstream, progressive and leftwing Jewish groups have condemned the administration’s actions as a dangerous violation of free speech.

“It is both possible and necessary to directly confront and address the crisis of antisemitism, on campus and across our communities, without abandoning the fundamental democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many others, to thrive here,” said Amy Spitalnick, head of the liberal Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

In a letter on Thursday to the US Department of Homeland Security, several groups including the New York Jewish Agenda, Aleph: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Habonim Dror North America and others, said that they were “deeply disturbed by the circumstances surrounding the apprehension and detention of Mahmoud Khalil”.

“Irrespective of the content of Mr Khalil’s speech, we firmly believe that his arrest does nothing to make Jews safer,” the groups said. “In the past, laws and policies that limit the right to free speech have often been wielded against the Jewish community, and we are worried that we are seeing signs that they are being wielded against Muslim, Arab, and other minority communities now.”

David Myers, a distinguished professor and the Sady and Ludwig Kahn chair in Jewish history at the University of California Los Angeles, told the Guardian he believed the Trump administration was instrumentalizing and weaponizing “antisemitism for political gain”.

“I think ultimately, [the administration] is interested in something larger than defending Jewish students, it’s really interested in bringing the university to its knees as a way of removing a key liberal, progressive actor from the American political game,” he said.

Myers described Betar’s decision to compile a list of people to be deported as “horrifying” but “not a total surprise”, he said, given what Betar has historically represented, which he called an “embrace of Jewish fascism”.

“I find it distasteful, un-Jewish and collaborationist to forge together lists of people who fail to meet a political litmus test,” Myers said.

He believes universities should resist pressure from the government and uphold the principles of fairness and democracy.

“It’s a moment of reckoning about where one’s values really lie,” he said.

“If universities submit, that’s removing an extraordinarily important site of free and open thinking from the American political conversation. I think that would be very ominous for this country, a further step in the move towards a fully authoritarian regime.”

Anna Betts

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