Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s wife has refuted allegations that her husband is a Hamas supporter, calling the accusations by the United States government “ridiculous” and “disgusting”.

In an interview with US media outlet CBS published on Sunday, Khalil’s pregnant wife Noor Abdalla denied assertions by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, was distributing Hamas flyers. No evidence has been presented by the US government to back up this allegation.

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“I think it’s ridiculous. It’s disgusting … that that’s the tactic that they’re using to make him look like this person that he’s not, literally,” she said.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil on March 8, and is holding him in a detention facility in Louisiana, as part of US President Donald Trump’s pledge to crack down on – and in some cases deport – students who joined protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that swept US university campuses last year.

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Trump has accused the student protesters of participating in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”, without offering evidence to support these claims.

Khalil served as a spokesperson and negotiator last year for the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the Columbia campus. He has said that his detention is a consequence of exercising his right to free speech and has described himself as a “political prisoner”.

On March 10, a US district judge in New York temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation, and then further extended that prohibition two days later.

“It’s so simple: he just doesn’t want his people to be murdered,” Abdalla told CBS. “He doesn’t want to see little kids losing limbs.”

The Trump administration is pushing to deport Khalil under a rarely used provision of an immigration law that gives the secretary of state power to remove any non-citizen whose presence in the US is deemed to have “adverse foreign policy consequences”.

A graduate student until December, Khalil was previously in the US on a student visa but has since obtained a green card, making him a lawful permanent resident of the country.

The number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 has crossed 50,000, and more than 113,000 have been wounded, Gaza health officials said on Sunday.

On Tuesday, Israel broke a nearly two-month-long ceasefire agreement with Hamas, ramping up its attacks on Gaza and killing more than 670 people since then, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

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Discrimination in the US

Wiping away tears, Abdalla expressed her frustration over the repeated need to defend herself and her husband against the Trump administration’s accusations.

She said it reminded her of discrimination she has faced as a Muslim in the US.

“In New York the other day, me and my husband were walking and someone called me a ‘terrorist’,” she said. “I think most Muslims in this country can relate to that. It doesn’t matter what I say … that’s what they’re going to think of me.”