A Pro-Israel protest and a Pro-Palestinian counter protest took place at Columbia University on April 18, 2024. 

NEW YORK — Over 100 people were arrested and issued summonses for trespass — including Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter — after protesters set up an encampment at New York’s Columbia University in support of Gaza, police said.

The demonstrators occupied the space on the university’s South Lawn for 30 hours, Mayor Eric Adams said after the arrests Thursday. Columbia asked the NYPD for help and said the students had been suspended and were refusing to leave, police said.

“Columbia University’s students have a proud history of protests and raising their voices,” Adams said, but he said that they don’t have the right to violate university policies.

“We will not be a city of lawlessness,” Adams said.

Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, 21, who attends neighboring Barnard College in Manhattan, said on social media platform X that she was suspended for “standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide,” along with at least two other students.

Hirsi, an organizer with a student group that advocates for Palestinians, said this was her first time being punished as a student activist in her three years at the New York City school.

“Those of us in Gaza Solidarity Encampment will not be intimidated,” she wrote.

More than 108 were arrested and given summonses for trespass, including Hirsi, police said. Two of those people were also charged with obstruction of governmental administration, according to authorities.

The students that were arrested were peaceful, did not resist “and saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said.

But around 500 other students left class and surrounded the quad “and were telling us that we’re the KKK,” among other insults, Caban said. Video from the scene obtained by NBC News shows crowds chanting “shame on you!” but does not capture the entire incident.

Columbia University’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said in a memo to police earlier Thursday that more than 100 people were occupying the area.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” the memo said.

Shafik said the demonstrators were trespassing, refusing to disperse and damaging campus property, among other violations.

In a statement Thursday, Shafik said she authorized police to clear the encampment “out of an abundance of concern” for safety on campus.