WASHINGTON — Despite not being accused of a crime, a New York man who was arrested by federal law enforcement over the weekend was labeled “a terrorist” by the second-highest ranking Homeland Security official in a radio interview on Thursday as the official struggled to justify the man’s detention and potential deportation.

“I think if he would have declared he's a terrorist, we would have never let him in,” Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar told NPR’s “Morning Edition” when pressed on what law or rule Mahmoud Khalil is alleged to have broken. The 30-year-old is a Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident with a green card who was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

Khalil, the grandson of Palestinians forced out of their homeland, helped lead pro-Palestinian protests in New York. He has not been charged with a crime as he remains in detention in a Louisiana facility, 1,400 milles away from his home and where he was quickly sent after his arrest on Saturday in Manhattan. A legal battle on his behalf is making its way through the federal court system this week, and a federal judge ordered the Trump administration not to deport Khalil for the time being, but did not release Khalil from federal custody. 

President Donald Trump promised this week that Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come” and that pro-Palestinian protesters “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” will be apprehended and deported. At a press conference in Albany on Wednesday, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration considers Khalil a “national security threat.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen and a dentist eight months pregnant with their first child, said Khalil was being subjected to “false claims… that were simply not based in reality” and had long feared retaliation from authorities over his activism. 

“You've got somebody that has come into the country on a visa. And when he's going through the visa process, he is coming in to basically be a student that is not going to be supporting terrorism,” Edgar said earlier in the NPR interview. “And at this point, the State Department has revoked his visa for supporting that terrorist type organization. And we're the enforcing agencies, so we've come in to basically arrest him.”

No federal agency has accused or charged Khalil with a crime. When asked at least nine times in the roughly five-minute interview which of Khalil’s actions constituted terrorism or support for terrorism, Edgar could not name specific examples, repeatedly insisting Khalil’s alleged actions “supporting terrorism” could be understood by watching television news. 

“I think you can see it on TV, right? This is somebody that, you know, we've invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity,” Edgar said. “And at this point, like I said, the secretary of state can review his visa process at any point and revoke it, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Protests in support of the Palestinian people since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023 have been attended by millions of people in the United States, citizens and non-citizens alike. While incidents of antisemitism and violence have been reported at pro-Palestinian protests, Khalil has not been directly accused of antisemitism nor any wrongdoing.

Trump often publicly equates criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians with antisemitism and support for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. On Wednesday, Trump said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader and highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history with a decades-long history of support for Israel, is “a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”

Many protesters who have rallied in support of the Palestinian people argue that antisemitism is not central to the protests and that their advocacy is focused on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has left at least 48,000 Palestinians dead, the authoritarian treatment of Palestinians in that territory in the West Bank and the war crimes the International Criminal Court has accused the Israeli government of carrying out.

On Thursday in New York, nearly 100 protesters were arrested at Trump Tower, the crown jewel of the president’s real estate holdings, as a pro-Palestinian Jewish group lead an occupation of the building’s lobby in support of Khalil.

“As Jews, we are taking over the Trump Tower to register our mass refusal. We will not stand by as this fascist regime attempts to criminalize Palestinians and all those calling for an end to the Israeli government’s US-funded genocide of the Palestinian people,” Jewish Voice for Peace said on social media. “And we will never stop fighting for a free Palestine.”

During a brief hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge in New York ruled that Khalil will stay in Louisiana while he considers pleas by his attorneys to let him return to New York and be released under supervision. The judge also ordered the federal government to allow Khalil’s legal team to speak with him on the phone after they said in court they had been prevented from doing so in the four days following his arrest and detention in Louisiana. 

On Thursday, Khalil and seven students identified by pseudonyms filed a lawsuit seeking to block a congressional committee from obtaining Columbia and Barnard College disciplinary records for students involved in campus protests.

"I didn't take him seriously. Clearly I was naive," Abdalla told Reuters on Thursday of her husband’s concerns prior to his arrest. Abdalla told the outlet she assumed her husband’s status as a legal permanent resident would protect him from deportation by the Trump administration. 

"I think it would be very devastating for me and for him to meet his first child behind a glass screen," Abdalla said. "I've always been so excited to have my first baby with the person I love."

In her statement on Tuesday, Abdalla said she was born and raised in the Midwest by Syrian immigrants who came to the U.S. believing it “would bring a sense of safety and stability.”

“But here I am, 40 years after my parents immigrated here, and just weeks before I’m due to give birth to our first child, and I feel more unsafe and unstable than I have in my entire life,” she said. “US immigration ripped my soul from me when they handcuffed my husband and forced him into an unmarked vehicle.” 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.