The Trump administration is coming for student protesters
1 min read
Summary
Mahmoud Khalil, a student with a green card, was detained in his Columbia University-owned apartment by ICE agents and subsequently moved from New York to a Louisiana detention center in the middle of the night.
ICE claims Khalil is a threat to the US’s “foreign policy interests” and that he is stateless but his attorneys dispute both claims.
He is being held in detention while the US government decides whether to revoke and deport him under an obscure statute in the McCarran-Walter Act.
The Trump administration is stepping up its crackdown on Palestine-related student activism, expelling students and demanding that universities censor and punish pro-Palestine activism or risk losing federal funding.
Khalil had previously written to Columbia’s president asking the university to protect him from what he described as a vicious, coordinated, dehumanizing doxxing campaign by a Columbia professor and a fellow student.
The Trump administration has celebrated Khalil’s arrest, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio falsely declaring that the US can revoke the citizenship of green card holders.
Khalil’s attorneys claim his ongoing detention is a violation of his Due Process rights and is arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the APA.