The wife of the Columbia University rabble-rouser detained by the feds says he tried to prep her on what to do if an ICE agent showed up at their door, but she dismissed him — just days before he was nabbed.
“I didn’t take him seriously,” Mahmoud Khalil’s pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, told Reuters on Wednesday. “Clearly I was naive.”
Her 30-year-old husband — who was a driving force behind many of the anti-Israel protests, building takeovers and encampments that plagued Columbia for more than a year — is currently in ICE custody after the feds grabbed him at his university-owned apartment building Saturday.
Khalil, a green card-holding Palestinian born in Syria, is among the first to be detained after President Trump vowed to start deporting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests.
His wife, who is a US citizen, was front and center in a Manhattan court earlier Wednesday as his lawyers fought to prevent the deportation — arguing ICE detained him illegally.
The Trump administration, though, has argued the US can legally boot Khalil — who received his graduate degree from the Ivy League school in December — for his role in its anti-Israel campus protests.
They have said that while Khalil isn’t accused of or charged with a crime, his presence in the US is “contrary to national and foreign policy interests.”
Abdalla, a 28-year-old dentist, has been married to Khalil for two years and is eight months pregnant with their first child.
She defended her husband, saying he has only been “fighting for his people” and hopes he’ll be cut loose by the time their baby is born.
“I think it would be very devastating for me and for him to meet his first child behind a glass screen,” Abdalla said, adding that Khalil had insisted on doing all the cooking, laundry and cleaning through her pregnancy.
“I’ve always been so excited to have my first baby with the person I love.”
“He is the most incredible person who cares so much for other people,” she added. “He is the most kind, genuine soul.”
With Post wires