New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday that the anti-Israel protest at Columbia University has been co-opted by “outside agitators.”

Following the arrest of dozens of protesters who had illegally taken over the Hamilton Hall academic building on campus on Tuesday night, Adams issued a press conference claiming that authorities were trying to “distinguish between who were actually students and who were not supposed to be on the grounds” during their arrest.

According to him, the “outside agitators” who influenced the protest were seemingly trained.

“There were individuals on the campus who should not have been there. They were people who are professionals and we saw evidence of training. I know that there are those who attempting to say, ‘Well, the majority of people may have been students.’ You don’t have to be the majority to influence and co-op an operation. That is what this is about,” 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,” he added.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard also indicated that professionals might have joined the student protests, as he pointed out on Wednesday that the chains anti-Israel protesters used to lock themselves in Hamilton Hall are “not what students bring to school.”

“This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities,” he said, revealing that between 40-50 protesters were arrested on Tuesday night after NYPD officers made their way into Hamilton Hall, where protesters had barred themselves.

“In order for our emergency services group to enter into the building, they had to first cut through these chains, but also get rid of debris and barricaded doors that were barricaded with refrigerators, vending machines, chairs, you name it, they pushed it up against those doors to try to stop us from coming in,” he stated.

According to the New York Post, 109 people in total were apprehended by cops at the Ivy League campus overnight on Tuesday.

Bringing the total number of arrests to more than 280, police also reportedly arrested an additional 173 protesters that night at City College in New York, where a mob of protesters tore down a U.S. flag and replaced it with a Palestinian one.