Detained pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil has missed the birth of his son after US authorities refused a temporary release, his wife said.

A graduate student at New York's Columbia University who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza, Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities on March 8.

He was ordered deported even though he was a permanent US resident as a green card holder through his American citizen wife, Noor Abdalla.

Abdalla said on Monday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied a request to release Khalil temporarily for the birth of their child.

"This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer," she said in a statement.

"My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud. ICE and the Trump administration have stolen these precious moments from our family in an attempt to silence Mahmoud's support for Palestinian freedom," she said.

She gave birth in New York. Khalil was transferred to the southern state of Louisiana in an apparent bid to find a judge sympathetic to President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Trump's advisors have accused pro-Palestine protesters of promoting anti-Semitism and terrorism, charges that the activists deny.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy.

Rubio argues that US constitutional protections of free speech do not apply to foreigners and that he alone can make decisions without judicial review.

Hundreds of students have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records.

Crackdown on students

Khalil's arrest was the first of a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on pro-Palestine activism.

A few days after Khalil's arrest, Trump's claim came due after another pro-Palestine student, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian researcher at Georgetown University, was arrested. His attorney said he was arrested because of the Palestinian identity of his wife.

After the arrest of Suri, authorities went after another pro-Palestine student, Momodou Taal, asking him to turn himself in.

On March 25, Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student, said she sued the Trump administration to stop her deportation from the US over her participation in a pro-Palestine protest last Spring.

Also on March 25, Ozturk, who is a Tufts University PhD student, was kidnapped in broad daylight by US authorities over criticising Israel's carnage in Gaza.

Last week, authorities arrested Mohsen Mahdwai, a pro-Palestine activist and also a Columbia student, during his citizenship interview.

Other students, like Leqaa Kordia, Ranjani Srinivasan, and Alireza Doroudi have either been detained or self-deported.