Israel protester Mahmoud Khalil should be free. And his arrest endangers us all | Opinion
On Saturday night, a legal resident of the United States, a former student from one of America’s most esteemed universities and an expecting father was, for roughly 36 hours, disappeared by his government.
Warrant? None
The crime? None, and that’s what the White House said.
Evidence? C’mon, catch up.
Yet, we are told, this will be done to this man and others like him, to protect our freedoms.
It is important we understand that Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest, shocking as it may be, is the fulfillment of a promise. The Trump administration, under the banner of punishing antisemitism, has been signaling retaliation on political dissidents since the president’s second inauguration, starting with an executive order promising to expel and deport foreign students participating in “illegal protests.”
Khalil, a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Syria, protested the Israeli government’s active genocide of his people in response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, pressuring his school to divest from American arms manufacturers enabling Gaza’s bombing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has carried Trump’s agenda, confirming on X (formerly Twitter) that Khalil was a target and promising that the government will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards” of and other lawful residents he smeared as “Hamas supporters.” According to a recent report, the secretary of state would use artificial intelligence to identify visa holders the Trump administration defines as “pro-Hamas.”
And so, with the apparent permission of Columbia University, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided Khalil’s school-owned apartment complex in Manhattan. According to Khalil’s lawyer, ICE agents said they were initially ordered by the State Department to revoke his visa. But upon learning Khalil had legal permanent residence, agents said they would take his green card instead.
Showing how little anyone’s legal right to sleep in their apartment matters, Khalil’s wife alleged ICE threatened to arrest her, too, even though she is a full U.S. citizen gestating a soon-to-be-citizen in her belly. (Chillingly, Khalil was arrested one day after pleading with his university to protect him from what he called a “vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign” led by campus faculty.)
In America, your worst enemy is allowed to condemn the values you hold most dear and support the values you oppose. Ku Klux Klansmen. Neo Nazis. God-forbid, the Philadelphia Eagles. None of these groups, with ideology based on explicit hatred, are welcome, exactly. But we permit them. As a result, in America you can iron your robe and pointy hood and flaunt it in public. You can shout “Sieg Heil” to your buddies twice on Inauguration Day while everyone’s watching. In Fort Worth, people can gather with the worst people we know at the local library. Jalen Hurts jersey to the Jerrydome? Sure! It’s a free country. And not just for the people you like.
But Khalil is apparently something worse than a Nazi or a Klansman. Khalil is Palestinian.
And worse, he asserted his Palestinian identity on campus by organizing in civil disobedience — using methodology popularized by people we sometimes claim to celebrate as causing “Good Trouble” — to end the mass murder of his people, accomplished with US bombs.
The Department of Homeland Security provided no proof, law or court judgment articulating a reason for Khalil’s detainment. Instead, they claim Khalil performed “activities aligned with Hamas,” backed with extralegal use of armed security to enforce baseless accusations.
What does “aligned with Hamas” mean, anyway? Was Khalil, from his Harlem apartment, planning an attack on Israel? Does he order from Yahya Sinwar’s falafel guy? Don’t hurt yourself trying to make sense of the senseless. Rubio, Trump and the DHS aren’t clarifying his actions, they would rather catalyze your fears by misleading you about his beliefs. Their gambit only depends on your imagination coloring in the rest.
You may be inclined to trust that, generally, when your government cracks down on what it calls terrorists or illegals, it is upholding your freedom. You may see something like the demonstrations against ICE deportations across North Texas and dismiss it as a pointless obstruction of the government’s responsibility to uphold the law
But if the United States successfully banishes Khalil, then your Bill of Rights belong in the same shredder as his green card. In that kind of government, “legal” and “illegal” are weapons in the hands of your government, redefined then aimed at whomever holds a point of view the president doesn’t like.
You may believe you have nothing in common with Khalil because the weapon isn’t pointed at you. If so, I disagree, but I’ll pretend for a moment that’s true. Fascists are emboldened by bullying the people you don’t care for, and they never tire of discovering and devouring scapegoats. Your blind eye won’t protect you.
For all of Columbia’s punishment of its students — first by framing their dissent against a genocide as inherently dangerous, then by allowing ICE to extralegally arrest, jail, and attempt to deport one of its students — the Trump administration rewarded the school by pulling $400 million in federal grants. Complying with the Trump administration’s attacks on its political enemies – be it equating critique of Israel to antisemitism, scrubbing “DEI” mentions from your website, or excluding trans people from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity - will never satisfy. Better to starve the beast than give it seconds.
The only real, material difference between the people comfortably reading this article and those dragged out their front door is a piece of paper that says you belong. Or at least it was. Trump and Rubio have made it clear that those constitutional rights conferred by Khalil’s papers aren’t inalienable. And if those rights are worth as much as the paper they’re printed on, then they can be taken away without a moment’s notice.
Does that make you feel free?
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Israel protester Mahmoud Khalil should be free. And his arrest endangers us all | Opinion."
