Latest Columbia College graduate and Palestinian immigrant Mahmoud Khalil was lately detained by President Donald Trump’s Division of Homeland Safety following his work main the college’s Gaza solidarity encampment.
Khalil is a everlasting U.S. resident with a legitimate inexperienced card, and his spouse, who’s eight months pregnant, is a U.S. citizen.
Although Khalil was not charged with any crimes, the Trump administration tried to deport him. The deportation was quickly blocked by a federal choose on Monday.
“Law Enforcement enforcing the rule of law,” she wrote on X.
A protester holds an indication that reads “Release Mahmoud Khalil now” throughout an indication at Columbia College on March 10, 2025.
In the meantime, the detainment has sparked widespread criticism for its unconstitutionality.
“Violating rule of law, actually. You are shredding the Constitution of the United States to go after political enemies. Seizing a person without reason or warrant and denying them access to their lawyer is un-American and tyrannical. Anyone celebrating this should be ashamed,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote on X.
The American Civil Liberties Union launched a press release calling the arrest “unprecedented, illegal, and un-American.”
“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes,” the assertion mentioned.
And New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James expressed that she is working with Khalil’s authorized workforce.
“I’m extraordinarily involved in regards to the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, an advocate and authorized everlasting resident of Palestinian descent. My workplace is monitoring the scenario, and we’re in touch together with his legal professional,” she wrote on Bluesky.
The official Senate Judiciary Democrats Bluesky account shared help for Khalil, too, writing “Free Mahmoud Khalil.”
Progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc additionally launched a press release about Khalil’s detainment, calling it an abduction.
“Columbia grad student and legal permanent resident, Mahmoud Khalil, was just abducted by ICE for exercising his constitutionally protected rights to free speech and assembly. He should be home with his wife who is 8 months pregnant—not missing in ICE detention, unreachable by his lawyers,” it mentioned.
“The White House’s authoritarian actions are being falsely done in the name of Jewish safety and preying on legitimate Jewish fear about antisemitism. But this administration, which endangers Jewish life with Nazi salutes and its ties to the white nationalist movement, does not speak for us,” the assertion continued.
Equally, actor and former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon identified the unconstitutionality of the detainment of Khalil.
“Neither Trump nor DHS have the power to singlehandedly revoke someone’s green card, especially not for exercising the right to free speech, a right enshrined in the Constitution. DHS must IMMEDIATELY release Mahmoud Khalil!” she wrote on X.
Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, informed The New York Instances that revoking somebody’s inexperienced card is uncommon and normally the results of a legal conviction.
However, Mukherjee identified, revoking somebody’s inexperienced card “in retaliation for his public speech; that is prohibited by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
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