NEW YORK (NewsNation) — Police have arrested nearly 2,200 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the United States in recent weeks. Nearly half of those arrested at Columbia University and The City College of New York this week were not students.

Of the 282 people arrested at both campuses, 134 were unaffiliated with Columbia or CCNY, according to the New York Police Department.

Police said 112 protesters were arrested at the Ivy League university — 80 were students and 32 were not affiliated with the school. Meanwhile, 170 were arrested at CCNY, 102 of whom were unaffiliated with the campus.

‘Outside agitators’ influenced protests, mayor says

New York Mayor Eric Adams blamed “outside agitators” Wednesday for co-opting the demonstrations.

“There is a movement to radicalize young people. And I’m not going to wait until it is done to acknowledge the existence of it,” he said. “This is a global problem that young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children, and I’m not going to allow that to happen as the mayor of the city of New York.”

Adams added that police have identified organizations and people with a history of escalating situations. He repeatedly cited the presence of a woman on Columbia’s campus whose husband Adams said had been “convicted for terrorism.” However, the woman, Nahla Al-Arian, wasn’t on Columbia’s campus this week and isn’t among the protesters arrested.

Network of groups supporting protests

Several groups support the movement, making it difficult to track the organizing muscle behind the protests.

“We see a lot of the names of the organizations appear on the flyers calling for these protests,” said Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, a former U.S. Department of Treasury Department terrorism finance analyst.

He noted that a lot of these groups are Islamist-leaning or peer groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations, Americans for Muslims in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace.

“They’re extremely organized,” Schanzer said. “But, I think the point is that these are not spontaneous. They are not necessarily organic; they are cultivated by groups that have an ax to grind.”

Groups organized through the Telegram app

Protests outside Columbia were led by Within Our Lifetime, an offshoot of SJP.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, formed after Columbia banned SJP, urged protesters to immediately come to Columbia via social media and the encrypted Telegram app all day.

“SJP is by far the most ubiquitous group out there in terms of campus activity. They are an unregistered organization; they’re not a 5019(c)(3), they don’t have any official structure,” Schanzer said. “These are organizations that typically run on a shoestring, and yet they are active across the country right now — something to the order of 200 different campuses and creating quite a bit of mayhem.”

One protester, who has a lengthy criminal record and was described as an anarchist, was arrested twice at Columbia in the past two weeks.