At least 80 people were detained Wednesday night, police confirmed, after protesters took over a room of a Columbia University library in a resurgence of the on-campus pro-Palestinian demonstrations that rocked the nation last spring.
Confirmation of the detentions came hours after demonstrators, many wearing keffiyehs, stormed into Butler Library, chanting slogans and facing off with police and campus security officers.
Two Columbia Public Safety Officers were injured in a "crowd surge" as people tried to "force" their way into the library, the university said.
Video posted to social media showed university public safety staff members blocking entry to a campus building as a crowd tried to force its way inside.
Another shows someone being detained while shouting "help!"
Officers later ushered around 76 protesters in zip ties out of the building, an NBC News crew witnessed Wednesday night.
Columbia University said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that it was "dealing with a disruption in reading room 301 of Butler Library," saying its public safety team was "working to mitigate the situation."
Columbia waited hours after the disruptions began to request police assistance, with officers responding at around 7:10 p.m. Multiple people who did not comply with verbal warnings from police to disperse were taken into custody.
Israel's security Cabinet approved a plan to seize all of the Gaza Strip on Monday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the plan an intensive military operation aimed at defeating Hamas.
Gaza remains under a blockade by Israel, the longest since the war began in October 2023, as Israel's total ban on the entry of all goods, including food, fuel and medical supplies, enters its third month.
The Trump administration is also seeking to block federal funding from some universities, including Columbia and Harvard, for what it says is their failure to quell last year's protests and combat antisemitism on campus.
The administration is reviewing the visa statuses of "the trespassers and vandals" who were involved in Wednesday's demonstration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media.
Around 3:30 p.m., Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a group that calls on the university to divest its ties from Israel, publicized an "EMERGENCY RALLY: ALL OUT TO BUTLER LIBRARY" on social media.
The group said more than "100 actionists have reclaimed the main reading room as the Basil-Al-Araj Popular University." The post called on others to "support, bring noise, and wear a mask."
"The flood shows that as long as Columbia funds and profits from imperialist violence, the people will continue to disrupt Columbia's profits and legitimacy," CUAD wrote on Substack. "Repression breeds resistance — if Columbia escalates repression, the people will continue to escalate disruptions on this campus."
Videos posted by the group Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students showed people chanting "free, free, free Palestine” as they walked throughout the building. A second video showed a large group of people, many wearing keffiyehs, gathered and loudly chanting in what appeared to be the reading room.
Those involved protest also appeared to have vandalized structures in the library. Photos posted by CUAD appeared to show messages, including "free Gaza" and "we will always come back for Palestine," scribbled in marker on tables and glass cases.
Columbia had asked protesters to identify themselves and leave. It said that it repeatedly asked the protesters for their identification and that they "were repeatedly told that failure to comply would result in violations of our rules and policies and possible arrest for trespassing."
The demonstrators were barred from leaving the library without presenting public safety officers with their identifications. A large group of protesters, their faces obscured by keffiyehs, appeared to try to force their way through a set of doors where a group of what appeared to be security officers was standing, video on social media shows.
Officers appeared to resist and push the group back as someone on a megaphone pleaded with the group to "stop pushing, please," the video showed. The speaker says the protesters would be allowed to go if they took out their ID cards, to which the group responded with a resounding "No!" and a chant of "Let us go!"
The university allowed others in the library who were not involved in the protest to leave. In an alert sent to students, it said that the library was closed and that the area should remain clear.
The people involved in the protest refused to identify themselves and leave, Columbia said Wednesday evening, prompting the call to police.
“Requesting the presence of the NYPD is not the outcome we wanted, but it was absolutely necessary to secure the safety of our community,” it said in a statement, saying it believed people not affiliated with the university were also involved.
"Disruptions to our academic activities will not be tolerated and are violations of our rules and policies; this is especially unacceptable while our students study and prepare for final exams," it said. "Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today."
Outside the library, other groups of masked protesters in various locations around campus continued chanting, videos showed. A video showed dozens of people pushing up against police barricades just outside the campus at 114th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
In the Substack post, CUAD offered insight into the protest's location and meaning.
The group said it "renamed" the library to Basel Al-Araj Popular University as a reference to Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian writer "whose writings on the Palestinian resistance and on the nature of war guide revolutionaries around the world today." He was killed by Israeli forces in 2017, Al Jazeera reported at the time.
The group said it chose Butler Library to rebuke the man for whom the building is named, Nicholas Murray Butler, a former president of the university whom the group called "a shameless Nazi sympathizer."
CUAD also offered its demands of Columbia, including full financial divestment from Israel, for police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to leave campus, and amnesty for all "targeted by Columbia University's Discipline."
In April of last year, after she met with student groups amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus, then-President Minouche Shafik said that the school would not divest from Israel and that it and the students were unable to reach any agreement to end the protests.
The university announced "multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions" in March for people who participated in the protest occupying Hamilton Hall on campus last spring. It was not clear how many students were disciplined.
It is not clear whether ICE agents maintain a consistent presence on Columbia's campus, as CUAD's demands suggest, but agents were on the premises at least once in recent months, when they took student protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil into custody at his university-owned apartment building in March. Khalil has been detained in Louisiana since shortly after he was arrested and has been fighting his detention and potential deportation in court.
In three statements in the two days after Khalil’s arrest, the university said its policy is to comply with the law but also to require law enforcement operating in its nonpublic spaces to have judicial warrants. Khalil was detained without an arrest warrant, the Trump administration said later.
In March, the school agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration to restore federal funding that had been stripped. One of the demands was to hire 36 new campus security officers who, unlike previous security officers, will have the authority to arrest students.
