The Middle East Eye has revealed on Wednesday that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University masters grad who was detained by the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday night after his green car was revoked by the State Department, had security clearance from the British government. He worked, the outlet states, as a “programme manager at the Syria Office in the British embassy in Beirut from 2018 to 2022.”
Khalil “worked as a local manager for the Syria Chevening Program, a prestigious UK government international scholarship scheme, as well as for the Conflict, Stability, and Security Fund,” MEE states. Khalil came to the US in 2023, obtained a green card, and completed graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December 2024.
British diplomats had kind words for Khalil. Former diplomat Andrew Waller said that to gain his position in the UK’s embassy in Beirut, he “went through a vetting process to get the job and was cleared to work on sensitive issues for the British government.” Waller said that the UK program with which Khalil was affiliated is a “flagship UK soft power policy.”
“It brings the brightest