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The detention last weekend of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, by Department of Homeland Security agents, in compliance with an executive order signed by President Trump in January calling for the removal of foreign students who participated in protests, alarms me on many different levels.
Khalil’s “crime” appears to be that he played a prominent role in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, the scene of some of the fiercest protests against the war in Gaza. Khalil spoke to the national media about the students’ efforts and acted as a mediator between university officials and the activists and students who attended the protests.
A DHS document said Khalil, a Syrian national by birth, was deportable from the US under the Immigration and National Security Act, which allows the secretary of state to remove a person when they have reasonable grounds to believe that a person’s presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the US.”
For me personally, the particularly chilling aspect of Khalil’s case is that he is a permanent resident of the US, legally entitled to be in the US. He is also married to a US woman, who is eight months pregnant with their first child, adding to the stress of their situation. I was once a permanent resident card holder myself (I am now an American citizen), and I remember well that nagging sense of insecurity every time I travelled in and out of the country – about whether some border official would find a reason to detain or expel me.
The handful of times when I was pulled aside for further questioning upon arrival back in the US, I always felt lucky to be a relatively privileged, white, native English speaker, with good connections in the US, who could help me out if something did go wrong.
Most people detained alongside me spoke very little English, if at all, seemed to be of Hispanic, African or Asian descent, and looked absolutely terrified of the beefy, intimidating, guards who stood watching us, armed to the hilt. I thought it likely that they would face a far harder process than me.
The idea that the US government can arbitrarily detain and deport people who are legally resident in the US is absolutely terrifying for the millions of legally permanent residents in the US, who don’t yet possess citizenship. I believe Khalil’s Muslim, Arab background, made him especially ripe for targeting, given this administration’s particular hostility to such people. But his case has caused me to wonder – could the authorities even decide to revoke the citizenship of non-native-born Americans, such as myself, if they decide we too have become undesirable in some way? I no longer think this a far-fetched notion.
Friends in think tanks tell me they have been put under a “gag order” – told not to write about “democracy”, to be careful what they say about Ukraine, and not to repost anything negative about the administration, even if expressed by Republicans.
The second aspect of the case that bothers me is that, as of writing, Khalil has not been charged with a crime, is not alleged to have engaged in any activity legally prohibited to U.S. residents, and authorities have not provided any material proof to back up their informal assertions that he had been leading “activities aligned with Hamas”.
It is certainly true that some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities across America last year became violent. Many were deeply disruptive of normal campus life and were intimidating for Jewish students. It is also true that some protestors carried placards, chanted slogans, or wrote graffiti appearing to glorify the hideous atrocities of Hamas on 7 October.
However, no evidence has yet been produced to connect Khalil directly to these most extreme forms of protest, which many would contend did cross an acceptable line of behaviour.
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This did not stop US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, from defending Khalil’s detention, by doubling down on the implication that he was a pro-Hamas activist, who had moreover applied to study in the US with an explicit intention to promote anti-semitic activities.
Rubio said “When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is – which is how this individual entered this country, on a visitor’s visa – as a visitor, we can deny you that visa. W