Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Implications

March 17th, 2025

Lindsey Zhao

In April and May of last year, turmoil relating to pro-Palestinian protests rocked the foundations of higher education. Over 3600 protesters were arrested on campuses nationwide and in many cases, student protestors got their degrees revoked and faculty were fired. Many Republicans, including current President Donald Trump, heavily criticized the protests, calling them violent, pro-terrorist, and antisemitic. Now that he is back in office, President Trump has taken steps to strip some universities, including Columbia University, of millions of dollars in federal funding due to their failure to “address antisemitism on campus.”

Last week, the Trump administration took it a step further, when they arrested and planned the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who played a prominent role in leading pro-Palestinian protests last April on Columbia University grounds. Born in Syria to Palestinian refugees, Khalil holds a green card (a document that allows foreign immigrants the right to live and work permanently in the US, one step short of full citizenship) and is married to an American citizen. During the protests, he was on the frontline of negotiations with university officials, which has led to allegations that he led the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student group that demanded Columbia divest financially from Israel and call for a ceasefire. He and his lawyers strongly deny these claims.

The Trump administration used an obscure law named the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allows the secretary of state to deport foreign nationals that could bring the US “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Administration officials have kept the exact danger Khalil poses vague, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters he had distributed pro-Hamas propaganda during the protests but saying she “didn’t think it was worth the dignity” of sharing them. So far, that is about as much specificity on what crime he has committed as we’ve been given by the federal government.

President Trump, who has taken a hardline stance on deporting campus protestors who he argued were antisemitic and violent, warned that “This is the first arrest of many to come.”

The arrests have sparked mass controversy across the nation, with many questioning how President Trump could deport a legal resident and protests being planned in various cities. Green card holders can be deported; however, this typically only occurs if they have been convicted of a serious crime, like fraud or murder. Otherwise, they can be deported if there is reasonable ground to believe the person could be engaged in terrorist activities under the previously mentioned Immigration and Nationality Act.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have raised red flags about what this means for free speech in the United States, because green card holders are entitled to the same civil rights as naturalized citizens. No law supersedes the rights granted to legal residents in the Constitution, including the right to free speech in the first amendment. If the Trump administration can’t come up with a concrete reason why Khalil’s presence in the United States poses a serious foreign policy risk, it could be a First Amendment violation to remove a legal resident based on their political views.

Yet, the way President Trump may justify his attempts to deport Khalil could also risk threatening civil liberties. Given the vague interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, it could, in theory, extend to any international student that participated in the pro-Palestinian protests—or even any protests against anything the government deems a “foreign policy objective.”

Khalil’s lawyers have already complained that they weren’t able to get into private contact with Khalil for the first few days after his arrest, requiring a US district judge to step in. They are also currently fighting to keep the case from being heard in Louisiana, where judges tend to be less lenient on immigration cases, instead of New York, where he was initially arrested.

The Trump administration has argued they are justified in trying to deport Khalil because he has “promoted pro-Hamas propaganda.” It’ll be up to immigration courts to determine whether that argument should stand.

"Negotiating on behalf of people that took over a campus, that vandalized buildings. That's a crime in and of itself, that they're involved in being a negotiator, the spokesperson…And if you tell us, when you apply for a visa, 'I'm coming to the U.S. to participate in pro-Hamas events,' that runs counter to the foreign policy interest of the United States of America. If you had told us that you were going to do that, we never would have given you the visa."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio