Donald Trump’s threatened crackdown on college protests started in earnest Sunday night time with the arrest of pro-Palestinian activist and former Columbia College graduate scholar Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil, reportedly a inexperienced card holder who was concerned in final 12 months’s scholar protests over the warfare in Gaza, was arrested at his university-owned residence and brought into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to the Related Press. Khalil’s lawyer Amy Greer informed the AP that ICE brokers on the scene additionally threatened to arrest Khalil’s spouse, who’s an American citizen and eight months pregnant. Khalil is now reportedly being held in a detention facility in Louisiana.
In a post on X Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared the AP’s story, writing, “We shall be revoking the visas and/or inexperienced playing cards of Hamas supporters in America to allow them to be deported.” Immigration consultants, in the meantime, pushed back on the concept revoking inexperienced playing cards is even inside the State Division’s authority.
In a press release, Donna Lieberman, government director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the transfer by the Trump administration a “focused, retaliatory, and an excessive assault on [Khalil’s] First Modification rights.”
“It’s clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren’t MAGA-approved—which is a daunting escalation of Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, and an aggressive abuse of immigration legislation,” Lieberman wrote.
Khalil’s arrest comes after Trump threatened to imprison or deport college students concerned in “unlawful protests” on campus and to withhold federal funding from any schools and universities that let such protests. The Trump administration took specific intention at Columbia College, cancelling $400 million in grants and contracts on Friday over allegations that the varsity had failed to guard Jewish college students on campus. One other 9 faculties have been added to a federal watch list to be investigated by the Division of Justice.
Khalil had beforehand been amongst these being investigated by a brand new Columbia disciplinary committee centered on college students who had been crucial of Israel. In an interview with the AP final week, he mentioned he was going through allegations from the committee over social media posts “that I had nothing to do with.” The State Division can be reportedly planning to make use of AI instruments to scan scholar visa holders’ social media accounts for any signal of “pro-Hamas” views.
The Trump administration’s efforts to stifle anti-Israel sentiment on campus are simply the president’s newest try to crush dissent. By wielding the federal authorities’s immigration authorities—and most notably, its formidable funding energy—the president has spurred a mass chilling impact throughout the federal government and the non-public sector. At the same time as he claims to have ended authorities censorship, his administration is sort of actually censoring entire lists of words from a lot as being written on authorities web sites. Among the many too-hot-to-handle phrases authorities officers are being cautioned about, in keeping with the New York Occasions? “Ladies” and “Native American.”
