Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil expected in court after ICE arrest

(HOUSTON) — One of the astronauts who returned to Earth after an unexpected nine months in space said on Monday that everyone holds “responsibility” for what may have gone wrong with Boeing’s Starliner test flight.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams performed the first astronaut-crewed flight of Starliner to the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024.

However, what was supposed to be a mission lasting about one week turned into a nine-month stay aboard the ISS due to several issues with Starliner before they returned home in mid-March 2024.

In response to a question during a press briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday about who is to “blame” for what went wrong, Wilmore said everyone holds some “responsibility.”

“I’ll start with me,” Wilmore said. “There were questions that I, as a commander of the spacecraft, that I should have asked, and I did not. At the time, I didn’t know I needed to. And maybe you could call that hindsight. But I’ll start and point the finger, and I’ll blame me. I could’ve asked some questions, and the answers to those questions could have turned the tide.”

“‘Blame’ … I don’t like that term, but certainly there’s responsibility throughout all the programs, and certainly you can start with me,” he continued. “Responsibility with Boeing, yes. Responsibility with NASA, yes, all the way up and down the chain. We all are responsible. We all own this.”

Issues with the spacecraft prompted NASA and Boeing to send Starliner back to Earth uncrewed and keep Wilmore and Williams onboard the ISS until early 2025, when they would return home on a SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon spacecraft once Crew-10 arrived at the ISS.

The SpaceX Crew-9 undocked in the early hours of Tuesday, March 18, and deorbited in the afternoon, before returning to Earth Tuesday evening.

Williams said they were “surprised” by the public interest in their mission.

“It’s interesting. We go and launch, we knew it was a little bit unique, obviously, first time flying on a new spacecraft,” she said. “But, you know, then life goes on up there and … we pivoted, and we were International Space Station crew members, and we’re doing what all of our other friends and in the astronaut, office do is go and work and train and do science.”

“And so you’re not really aware of what else is going on down here. But, I think we were just really focused on what we were doing and trying to be part of the team and making sure we pulled our weight for the team,” Williams said. “So no, I don’t think we were aware to the degree — honored and humbled by the fact of when we came home like, ‘Wow, there’s, there are a lot of people who are interested.'”

The pair were also asked about how they felt about being pulled into the middle of a political battle.

During a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity in February, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the astronauts has been abandoned in space by then-president Joe Biden.

“They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden,” Trump said. “He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space. … He didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?”

During the Hannity interview, Musk said SpaceX was “accelerating” the return of Wilmore and Williams at Trump’s request, adding that “they were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”

These comments were made despite confirmation from NASA in August 2024 that Wilmore and Williams would return on the SpaceX Crew 9 spacecraft in early 2025.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who returned with Wilmore and Williams on Crew-9 said the politics “don’t make it up” to the ISS, but that there was always a plan to bring the astronauts home.

“We were planning from day one to return toward the end of end of February,” he said. “That all predicated on the fact that we would have a replacement crew show up, and we’d have adequate hand over that’s important to maintain the mission of the International Space Station, to continue pushing research and exploration, and that was never in question the entire time.”

Wilmore said although the Starliner mission did not go as originally planned, there were “contingencies” In place.

“We said this before; we had a plan, right? The plan went way off what we had planned,” he said. “But because we’re in human spaceflight, we prepare for any number of contingencies, because this is a curvy road. You never know where it’s going to go, we prepare for this.”

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(NEW YORK) — Oklahoma is under alert for fire danger on Monday after being devastated by deadly blazes over the weekend, and amid a continued fire threat in the Plains.

More than 50 million Americans are under alert for fire weather conditions on Monday. Red flag warnings and fire weather watches have been issued in more than a dozen states, from Texas and Oklahoma up to the Dakotas as well as Florida, due to the chance for high winds and low humidity.

Parts of Oklahoma, as well as Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, face a critical threat of fire danger, with gusts up to 45 mph possible along with relative humidity down to 9% in places.

The continued fire threat comes after four people were killed and over 140 injured in Oklahoma due to high winds and raging wildfires that ignited on Friday, officials said.

More than 130 fires were reported in 44 counties, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Friday.

More than 400 homes and structures have been destroyed in the fires, the agency said. That includes Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s ranch near Luther; the governor said his farmhouse experienced a “total loss” in Friday’s fires.

“We’ll be rebuilding with all of Oklahoma,” he said in a video posted to social media over the weekend.

Stillwater Fire Chief Terry Essary told ABC News on Monday that 75 structures were lost in his area alone after multiple wildfires broke out on Friday amid high winds that made for challenging conditions.

“The wind was blowing so hard,” Essary said. “It was a very helpless feeling, but you just keep at it. You do what you can, you save what you can, and you keep moving on to the next and helping as many people as possible.”

A state of emergency remained in effect on Sunday for 12 Oklahoma counties due to the wildfires and fire weather conditions, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said.

The fire threat continues in Oklahoma and increases in West Texas on Tuesday, with an extreme critical risk for weather conditions. Winds could gust 60 to 75 mph with relative humidity down to 7% in places. Any fires that develop in these conditions can spread easily and will be very difficult to control.

ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal and James Scholz contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Evidence submitted by Department of Homeland Security lawyers attempts to support the government’s accusations that Mahmoud Khalil should be deported on the grounds that he lied on his green card application.

The evidence — which included reporting by some conservative news outlets — centers on accusations that he withheld information about his employment history and his participation in pro-Palestinian groups.

ABC News has reviewed over 100 pages of evidence submitted in immigration court by both DHS lawyers and those representing Mahmoud Khalil.

On Friday, Judge Jamee Comans, an immigration judge based in Louisiana, where Khalil is being held agreed with the government’s stance that Khalil is deportable under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that says a person can be deemed deportable “if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

But Comans did not rule on the government’s allegations that he lied on his green card application.

Accusation: Khalil failed to disclose he’s a ‘member’ of CUAD

According to a Notice to Appear submitted in federal court filings, DHS has claimed Khalil “failed to disclose that you were a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).”

CUAD has been prominently involved in protests against the war in Gaza held at Columbia University.

To support their allegations, government lawyers submitted articles that were published in April 2024, which feature Khalil as a lead negotiator between student protesters who had set up encampments on campus and university administration officials.

However, Khalil’s green card application, reviewed by ABC News and included in the government’s evidence, shows it was submitted on March 29, weeks before the articles were published.

“These articles from late April 2024 cannot possibly support an allegation that Mahmoud failed to disclose any affiliation with CUAD on that application. Furthermore, CUAD is a collection of organizations and there is no individual membership, so the allegation would be completely meritless even if all of the government’s evidence were not from a month after Mahmoud submitted his application,” Marc Van Der Hout, Khalil’s immigration attorney, told ABC News.

In response to the government’s claims, Khalil’s lawyers have submitted information they believe shows that CUAD is not standalone group, but rather a coalition of separate groups, and that Khalil was a negotiator for these and other protesters and not a member.

As evidence, his lawyers submitted letters from several people familiar with his role in the protests, including a professor at Columbia University.

“I want to emphasize that Mahmoud Khalil’s involvement was not as a member of CUAD. As I understood it — and also as is my understanding from the Columbia administrators with whom I spoke — Mr. Khalil served as a negotiator between CUAD and other student protesters, on the one hand, and the Columbia administration, on the other,” the professor wrote.

Accusation: Khalil did not disclose he was a member of UNRWA

According to court filings, DHS has also accused Khalil of failing to disclose that he was a “member” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from June 2023 – November 2023. The organization provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees.

As evidence, DHS lawyers included excerpts from an article titled “These are the extremist student leaders of the anti-Israel protest camp bringing Columbia to its knees” published in the New York Post.

“Khalil was a political affairs officer with UNRWA–the United Nations’ agency that supports Palestinian refugees from June to November 2023, according to LinkedIn,” the article read.

Another excerpt included in the evidence, cites an article from The Times of India published March 11, 2025, which similarly claims Khalil worked as political affairs officer at the U.N. organization.

“The agency lost significant federal funding following reports that some members participated in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,200 fatalities,” the excerpt says.

In immigration court, Khalil’s lawyers submitted a screenshot of his LinkedIn profile which says he was an intern at UNRWA as a political affairs officer on those dates. They also submitted a letter dated April 10 and written by a Columbia University official that says Khalil concluded a 12-week internship at UNRWA for credit.

In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for UNRWA confirmed Khalil did a six-month, unpaid internship at the UNRWA Representative Office in New York in 2023.

“He was not a staff member of the Agency nor was he ever on the Agency’s payroll,” the spokesperson said. But the spokesperson also said, the agency “does not have in its Human Resources the job title of “Political Affairs Officer”.

ABC News has reached out to Khalil’s attorneys for comment.

Accusation: Khalil failed to disclose his he was employed at the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut ‘beyond 2022’

DHS lawyers allege that on his green card application, Khalil did not disclose his “continuing employment” as a Program Manager by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut “beyond 2022.”

On his green card application, under the “employment history” section, Khalil said he was a Program Manager at the British Embassy in Beirut from June 2018 to December 2022.

DHS submitted a profile of Khalil written on a website promoting an upcoming Society for International Development United States conference.

“Mahmoud Khalil works as a Program Manager at the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut,” the profile says.

However, documents that Khalil’s lawyers have submitted indicates they plan to argue that the information about him was written for a conference in 2020, and have included a schedule from that year that lists him as a speaker.

Additionally, they included an email written by a British Embassy official dated April 11, 2025, that states Khalil “ended his contract at the British Embassy Beirut in December 2022 in order to take up a scholarship at Columbia University.”

ABC News has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment

During the Friday hearing, Khalil’s attorney Johnny Sinodis condemned DHS’ evidence against his client.

“DHS did zero investigation on its own other than to file tabloids,” he said in court.

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