ICE Arrest of Palestinian Grad Has Brought Fear to Columbia University Campus

Immigration agents with the Department of Homeland Security have detained a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University in New York. Mahmoud Khalil, who is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, is a green card holder and is married to a U.S. citizen; his wife is eight months pregnant. Immigration officials told Khalil’s lawyer his green card was being revoked. Khalil recently graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and his whereabouts are unknown. “The [Trump] administration doesn’t seem to know exactly how to justify this very haphazard, unilateral move,” says Prem Thakker, political correspondent and columnist for Zeteo.

The arrest comes as Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university, despite Columbia’s suppression of pro-Palestine activism. The Trump administration doesn’t “really care about antisemitism or keeping Jews safe. All they care about is crushing dissent,” says Joseph Howley, associate professor of classics at Columbia University.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

An emergency rally is being held in New York today, after ICE agents detained a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Mahmoud Khalil is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who’s a green card holder and a lawful permanent resident of the United States. He’s married to a U.S. citizen. His wife is eight months pregnant. Immigration officials told Khalil’s lawyer his green card is being revoked. Khalil recently graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA. His whereabouts are unknown, though there are reports he might be in Louisiana.

In a statement, his lawyer, Amy Greer, said, quote, “ICE’s arrest and detention of Mahmoud follows the U.S. government’s open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza. The U.S. government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech,” unquote.

Mahmoud Khalil was a key organizer of the Columbia encampment. This is Mahmoud speaking on campus in April.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: This encampment is a minor inconvenience compared to the generational shaping events taking place now in Gaza. Throughout the negotiations, the Shafik administration treated this movement as a matter of internal student discipline rather than a movement — or, rather than as one of the great moral and political questions of this generation. Columbia’s shortsighted political decision, making today in the face of a genocide that has stolen the lives of over 34,000 human beings — women, men, babies — in Gaza, that has destroyed lineages and heritage sites and universities, will be a stain on its legacy forever.

The students on this encampment are a gift to Columbia. We offer to give the university back its principles. With all eyes on Columbia, the administration could have chosen to divest in a manner that aligned with its past. Columbia would rather trample its reputation. Instead of being proud of its students and faculty for raising these incredibly important moral questions, we have been hit with little more than threats and petty attacks. This is not a matter of simply violating university rules. This is a movement, an antiwar movement. We have sparked similar Gaza solidarity encampments across the nation and even across the globe.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Mahmoud Khalil speaking in April at the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University. He was detained by ICE on Saturday.

On Sunday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared an article about Khalil and wrote on X, “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” unquote.

Khalil’s arrest came as the Trump administration withdrew $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University for failing to stop, quote, “antisemitic” harassment at its campus. In fact, Columbia repeatedly targeted Palestinian rights protesters, many of them Jewish, and called in police to crack down on the peaceful student movement.

We’re joined now by two guests. Prem Thakker is political correspondent and columnist for Zeteo News. He’s also a Columbia graduate. His most recent piece, ”DHS Detains Palestinian Student from Columbia Encampment, Advocates Say.” We’re also joined by Joseph Howley, an associate professor of classics at Columbia University.

Professor Howley, let’s begin with you. Can you explain what happened to Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday? Where was he? How was he taken? And how is it possible he was taken, given that he has a green card?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Well, there’s a lot of questions in there we don’t know the answers to. And everything I know about what happened to Mahmoud comes from his lawyer and his family, because we’ve still received no communication from the university.

Our understanding is that he and his wife, who is a U.S. citizen who’s eight months pregnant, were returning home here in the neighborhood, and that plainclothes DHS agents forced their way into their home behind them, told Mahmoud that his student visa had been revoked. When it was explained that he had a green card, they seemed confused, got on the phone with someone, declared that the green card had also been revoked. Mahmoud’s lawyer got on the phone with them, demanded to see the warrant, and they hung up, and they took him off. And no one was able to find him, you know, I think, for at least 24 hours.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what people’s response is right now, staff, students around Columbia, how people are organizing?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Well, this is something that I think is very frightening for a lot of members of our community. I have colleagues and students, you know, messaging me since yesterday, asking about whether it’s safe to be on campus, asking about canceling classes or taking classes remote, because they don’t know how safe it is to be on or around campus with ICE agents prowling the neighborhood. And, you know, we have a lot of members of our community who are on student visas. We have a lot of members of our community who are permanent residents. And so, I think people are wondering now, you know: How is it safe to be here on campus?

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the atmosphere on campus?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Well, campus has been under a security lockdown since last April, since before the first Gaza solidarity encampment went up. So, walking into campus this morning, things were very quiet. But they’re always very quiet now. They’ve been quiet for months and months. It feels like we’re under, you know, a heavy security regimen.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you calling for? And can you talk about your criticism of the Columbia campus around the issue of the pro-Palestinian protests that took place all last year, how Columbia dealt with it? Ultimately, you have the president, Minouche Shafik, leaving. The president had called in police over and over again.

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Sure. Look, for the last year, a number of my colleagues and I have been trying to make the point to university leadership, to our colleagues that these attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement as somehow inherently antisemitic or the idea that the presence of the solidarity movement poses a threat to all Jewish students on campus are very dangerous lies and bad-faith attacks on higher education that we really should be engaging with as threats rather than as sincere complaints. So, we wrote a letter to former President Shafik last spring, that we published. We’ve written a few other letters and statements since then.

And the point is really this: We know that the political right in this country hates higher education and wants to destroy it or remake it in its own image. We’ve seen this in the public education system in places like Florida and North Carolina. And it’s been very clear to anyone who’s watching since last spring that this issue is being used as a wedge. But now what we can see is that everyone who spent the year pointing to anyone with a keffiyeh and yelling “Hamas!” pointing to anyone with a Palestinian flag and calling them a terrorist, everyone who spent the last year going on the public record and saying that Colombia has some sort of uniform, cultural, widespread problem with antisemitism, has been, you know, loading the gun for the Trump administration to do what they always wanted to do, which is cripple major institutions of learning in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Howley, if you could talk about the criticism that what’s going on on campus is antisemitic? In fact, are you yourself Jewish?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: I am Jewish. And, you know, I don’t really like playing that card, but it’s become very important, for those of us who are Jewish and do not subscribe to the idea that the presence of this protest movement is antisemitic, to stand up and say so.

But, look, we do have problems with, you know, harassment and bias towards Jewish students. We have problems with harassment and bias towards Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students. Every time Israel goes on a new killing spree in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, antisemitism surges around the world. Every time Hamas kills hundreds of people, we have to deal with attacks on Muslims and Arabs. We have a widespread climate problem here, because this is an international campus. But, you know, using the ADL’s playbook, under the guise of protecting Jewish students, to suppress the protest movement has not been making anyone safer.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what has happened now and if you believe other students have been taken by ICE?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: You know, we don’t have a lot of information about this. My understanding is that on Friday, not long after the federal government announced the funding freeze, that ICE agents tried to gain access to another student residence. We don’t know yet — or, I don’t know yet if anyone else has been detained at this point, but, you know, I’ve been hearing from students in the last 24 hours that there are rumors or reports of more ICE activity in the neighborhood today. And we haven’t gotten anything from the university administration about any of this, except to say that Columbia follows the law.

AMY GOODMAN: And your response to this happening at the same time your university, Columbia, now the federal government is cutting off $400 million to the university? We just had a segment on the attack on science. We’re talking about across the board in Columbia — right? — basic scientific research and beyond.

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Yeah, it’s going to be devastating. I mean, you know, experiments are going to languish. People are going to lose their jobs. Labs are going to get shut down. And, of course, it’s not just about the war on science. It’s about the war on higher education.

But I think the crucial thing to pay attention to here is that the cover that the White House is using for this is this claim that Columbia has done nothing to address this rampant climate of antisemitism. I’ve already told you I would dispute that characterization of the climate on campus. But it’s also clear that the university has done a great deal about this. We have, you know, a large new office of inclusion and equity that’s been investigating every conceivable complaint of antisemitism, including some that seem really kind of spurious or excessive.

I think it’s outrageous that we should be taking lectures from a White House on antisemitism, a White House that’s probably the most antisemitic administration in American history. And I think it’s preposterous that we as an institution should try to bargain or engage in good faith on the questions of antisemitism with, you know, neo-Nazis and segregationists and great replacement theorists. Like, I am old enough to remember when Donald Trump’s supporters marched through the campus of University of Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us.” I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party’s xenophobic propaganda about migrants convinced someone to shoot up the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. This is not a political movement that cares about keeping Jews or anyone else safe. This is a political movement that is going to instrumentalize the fear and confusion of Jews to crush any kind of dissent in this country and to break higher education.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you also talk about Columbia and Barnard expelling student protesters? The Nation magazine recently noted, according to the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the last expulsion for nonviolent political protest at the school was in 1936, when Robert Burke was expelled for rallying against Columbia’s ties to Nazism.

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Yeah. So, Barnard had recently expelled two students only a couple of weeks after they allegedly participated in a classroom disruption here on Columbia’s campus. And I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that expulsion is an incredibly drastic response to any kind of infraction here, especially one that amounts to, you know, a speech violation. My colleagues at Barnard tell me this expulsion was done without anything like due process, that the disciplinary process and oversight by faculty over there is really in shambles.

I think the important thing to remember here is that these are institutions of learning. And when we expel students summarily, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to help them learn. So, I don’t know what anyone thinks expelling students is going to achieve, except appeasing the right-wingers in D.C. But I think we can see that there’s actually no amount of discipline or suppression that will appease them, because they don’t really care about antisemitism or keeping Jews safe. All they care about is crushing dissent.

AMY GOODMAN: And do you think this is just about the pro-Palestinian protests, I mean, as we move forward, the message being sent around protests on campus, Professor?

JOSEPH HOWLEY: Yeah, look, this is — I mean, you remember what the backlash was like after the uprising in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, right? This is in part about whether we’re going to be allowed to have mass protest movements in this country, whether we’re going to be allowed to have youth protest movements and student protest movements. And my colleagues and I have been saying for a year now that one reason we need to stand up better to bad-faith lies about the Palestine solidarity movement is that this is about establishing a precedent for imposing speech codes on higher education and on American society generally. So, right now it’s Palestine. Next it’s going to be race or gender or trans rights or climate.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined, in addition to professor Joseph Howley, by Prem Thakker. He is a political correspondent, columnist for Zeteo News. You’ve been reporting extensively on the ICE raid on the home of this Columbia — former Columbia graduate student. Talk more about what you know, how they’re justifying the green card holder having his green card revoked, and now his eight-month-pregnant wife is not able to find out where he is, let alone anyone else, including his lawyer.

PREM THAKKER: Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Professor.

Yes, I think one thing that’s really worth underscoring here is just how clumsy and haphazard this attempt by the administration has been to detain Mahmoud and to subsequently revoke his green card. First of all, as the professor said, these agents forced themselves into this apartment building, did not necessarily, apparently, introduce themselves, demanded to see their identification, Mahmoud and his wife. And they first chose to tell him that they were revoking his visa, that the State Department was revoking his visa. Upon them being told that, in fact, Mahmoud had a green card, they were on the phone. They said, “Oh, actually, you know, the green card is revoked, as well.”

And so, that was the basis for the consequent or subsequent way in which this has been seen, which is that the administration has been very lackluster in their explanation for how this is justifiable at all, first the shadowy arrest and detention at all, the fact that it’s unclear where Mahmoud is right now. I can sort of break some potential possible news right now, that it seems, based on internal ICE detainee tracking, that Mahmoud appears to be in Louisiana, as was feared. That is not confirmed, but that is what we are seeing from the ICE detention tracker, which can sometimes be delayed or lag. But that is something to keep in mind, that Mahmoud, who was detained in New York City, is, 36 hours later, already possibly in Louisiana. So, there is that aspect, the shadowy aspect of this.

There’s also the aspect that the administration doesn’t seem to know exactly how to justify this very haphazard, unilateral move and is trying to appeal to simply President Trump’s executive orders rather than things like the Constitution or case law or legal precedent. You have Marco Rubio, as mentioned, saying that they will be revoking not just visa cards but also and/or green cards, which is very much beyond his sort of stated authority, his jurisdiction. There is some — there is one individual law that gives him wide authority to do so, but this would require Marco Rubio personally interfering on foreign policy grounds to justify such a deportation. And so, I think you’re going to see a lot of not just moral pushback but legal pushback against some of that as just so haphazard, so reckless and so unjustifiable in so many different ways.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you understand about the university, Columbia University? How much are they — or are they — resisting this pressure from the administration or even the arrest of Mahmoud?

PREM THAKKER: So, we had asked the university pretty early on about, you know, sort of their awareness of ICE and DHS activity on campus during and before this detention, if they had shared any student information or campus affiliate information with authorities. And they chose not to answer those questions. They directed us to this broader statement regarding guidance, that they had sort of coincidentally issued to campus affiliates just before this happened, about what affiliates should do if they see ICE or DHS activity on campus.

So, beyond the sort of suspect or interesting timing, what’s interesting is that in this guidance, it sort of contrasts as to how the university sort of operated in 2016 during Trump’s first term, while the school was led by First Amendment scholar and Columbia President Lee Bollinger, in which they were much more firm in saying that they wouldn’t allow immigration authorities to be on campus without a warrant, that they wouldn’t share information with authorities unless they were ordered by a court or subpoenaed, whereas in this new guidance, they sort of have this more open tolerance or idea to the idea that DHS or ICE agents might need to access buildings even without a warrant and that campus affiliates, quote, “should not interfere” if that’s the case, under sort of exigent circumstances, as the school calls them. And so, there’s already this sort of shifting in rhetoric from Trump in his first term to Trump in his second term from Columbia’s point of view. And you can see that manifesting in what we’ve seen this weekend and, as the professor has said, with reports of more ICE and DHS presence even up to today.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Prem Thakker, the firing of, the forcing out of the professor, law professor Katherine Franke — we just have 30 seconds — this also coming within this period? She was a law professor for almost a quarter of a century at Columbia.

PREM THAKKER: Yes, yes, absolutely. And I believe the firing of professor Katherine Franke, you can see more about that in our Zeteo town hall today with her, actually. She is amongst an array of sort of victims, people caught up in the crossfire, being targeted, as Professor Howley said, for this right-wing attack on academic freedom, on institutions, on free speech, on the ability for professors to advocate for their students, to express their own free speech rights, to speak out against war, to speak out on behalf of Palestinians. And this is only a sort of broader sort of warning sign of what’s to come if there is not an organized, coherent opposition to this.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Prem Thakker, I want to thank you so much for being with us, political correspondent and columnist for Zeteo. We’ll link to your articles. And, Professor Howley, thanks so much.