Mahmoud Khalil was unlawfully detained by ICE agents on Sunday, March 9, in New York City, for being the media spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
Khalil, 30, is of Palestinian descent and a permanent resident of the United States. He was initially here on a student visa but obtained his green card after marrying an American citizen, who, at the time of this article, is pregnant and due next month.
By all accounts, this was an illegal action performed by the U.S. Government. This is a blatant injustice and an extremely dangerous precedent to set moving forward in this new administration.
“This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States, to begin with,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a Wednesday briefing.
Rubio’s comments on a green-card-holding resident show the animosity this administration has against immigrants.
This should sound alarm bells to all of us college students. We should not be at risk of being deported, no matter who we are or what we say. If Khalil were supporting any other cause other than Palestinian liberation, he probably wouldn’t have been arrested. So, why is it that protesting for Palestine is considered a deportable offense?
The State Department attempted to justify his deportation by calling him a Hamas supporter and an antisemite. Many of these claims are false, and Khalil has denounced anti-Semitism from the pro-Palestine movement.
“There is, of course, no place for antisemitism,” says Khalil. “What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that’s taking different forms and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms.”
Khalil’s illegal arrest is an attack on our constitutionally given rights to freedom of speech and protest, a pillar of American Democracy. Khalil is today, and you could be tomorrow. We cannot be neutral in this situation, as it affects all of us, regardless of political party or beliefs. You don’t have to agree with Khalil to want him to be free.
We cannot allow the fascistic rule of the Trump Administration to take away our right to protest publicly. Imagine if the tables were turned and Joe Biden arrested Turning Point USA members on college campuses for protesting against his presidency. That would be brought with immediate outrage; so why is Khalil different?
We must now use our constitutional rights to go out into the streets and protest this injustice. We need to write to our representatives – regardless of party, to let them know that this is an illegal governmental overreach and that we the people are pissed off.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Khalil’s arrest goes against this, and it threatens our democracy. It’s a warning that we must heed; our civil liberties are at stake, and we must choose to stand up before we’re forced to stand in line.
Andrew Sarhan is a mass communication freshman from Baton Rouge, La.
