“Is Protesting a Deportable Offense?”

DHS Arrests Columbia Student Who Led Pro-Palestinian Protests Last Spring

Palestinian-American Mahmoud Khalil, who played a critical role in the student-led protests at Columbia last Spring, has been arrested and detained by Federal immigration agents for the crime of criticizing Israel.

According to his lawyer, Amy Greer, Khalil was inside his university-owned apartment on Saturday night when ICE agents entered and detained him. Originally, it was believed that Khalil was in the country on a student visa, which ICE agents claimed would be revoked; however, when Greer informed agents that he was an American citizen with a green card, they said they’d be revoking that instead.

This comes as a direct response to Trump’s executive order to combat anti-Semitism. A spokesperson for Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed that the arrest was directly connected to Khalil’s involvement in the protests, alleging he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

Outraged by the blatant violation of Khalil’s constitutional rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace occupied the New York Trump Tower earlier today. The group said it was “taking over the Trump Tower to register our mass refusal.”

“We will not stand by as this fascist regime attempts to criminalize Palestinians and all those calling for an end to the Israeli government’s US-funded genocide of the Palestinian people,” the group said in a post on X.

Of the 150 protestors occupying Trump Tower, NYPD arrested 98. Kaz Daughtry, the deputy mayor for public safety, said on Fox News that there were no injuries and all the protesters had been removed from the building.

Perhaps most troubling was the lack of clarification given by the Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar when pressed by NPR journalist Michel Martin to explain exactly what Khalil’s crimes were.

See an excerpt of the interview below: 

Martin: Is any criticism of the government a deportable offense?

Edgar: Let me put it this way, Michel, imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, ‘I want a student visa.’ They asked him, ‘What are you going to do here?’ And he says, ‘I’m going to go and protest.’ We would have never let him into the country.

Martin: Is protesting a deportable offense?

Edgar: You’re focused on protests. I’m focused on the visa process. He went through a legal process …

Political commentator and Twitch Streamer Hasan Piker, a staunch advocate for Palestinian emancipation, felt that Deputy Secretary Edgar purposefully kept his answers vague.

“What makes you think tomorrow they’re not going to do this [to] gay students, trans students, Black students, anything they want,” Piker said on his live stream. “What makes you think they’re not gonna do this because [schools] have too much DEI, for example. That’s also an intentionally vague definition.”

This sentiment echoes another point in history, one best described by the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me