More pro-Palestinian demonstrations planned at Columbia University: Report

HOUSTON, United States

A group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators plans to hold several protests at Columbia University in New York City by setting up tent encampments, according to a report Wednesday by NBC News.

The activists are protesting the war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 51,300 Palestinians since the Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy the Palestinian group Hamas in response to a cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

The planned protests are expected to begin Thursday afternoon and come just over a year after students set up a similar encampment with more than 50 tents at the university. That demonstration led to multiple arrests and prompted the Trump administration to crack down on foreign protesters by detaining them, revoking their student visas and processing them for deportation.

According to NBC News, a coordination meeting took place Tuesday night in Brooklyn, about 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) from campus, where about 100 people showed up wearing masks to conceal their identities. Invitations were issued mostly by word of mouth or through phone calls.

Organizers of the demonstration asked participants not to arrive on campus wearing masks on the days of the protests, as to not alert campus security officers they were gathering.

Two encampments are planned at different areas of the university -- one for Thursday and another on Friday.

"When we take over the lawn, our goal is to unify the space and make it our own," said one of the organizers on a recording obtained by NBC News.

Thursday’s encampment is planned to start at 1 p.m. local time on the West Butler Lawn of the main campus, where encampments were set up last year. The recording indicated that protesters will disperse before nightfall or before police arrive.

The Friday encampment is expected to take place at the university's nearby Manhattanville campus, but according to the recording, students plan to stay indefinitely and expect arrests to be made.

"Any action that we do will bring police, will bring repression, and we thought about that deeply and we're aware of that," said one of the speakers at the meeting. "And we're stuck in this situation where inaction is also violence."

The protests come just weeks after federal immigration officials apprehended several Columbia University students who participated in last year's protests, including Mahmoud Khalil, 30, who is currently awaiting court proceedings to determine whether he will be deported.