“We are not intimidated. We will not back down. We are not afraid.”
Thousands protest in New York City and Washington, DC to demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident arrested by immigration officers over his Gaza advocacy.
President Trump called Khalil’s deportation “the first arrest of many to come.”
Khalil, a green card holder and anti-war movement leader at Columbia University, is the first international student targeted under Trump’s Executive Order to combat what the White House called an “explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses.”
A federal judge has temporarily suspended the deportation, but Khalil—a Palestinian born in Syria—remains imprisoned in a Louisiana detention center.
Khalil, who earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International Affairs last semester, had not been charged with any crime. He was arrested at his university-owned home near campus.
A key figure in last year’s campus protests, he served as a negotiator for students who set up a tent encampment.
His lawyer says he was arrested Saturday night, and that ICE officers threatened his wife, a US citizen who is eight months pregnant.
“This is straight out of the fascist playbook. Criminalizing dissent is an assault on our First Amendment. Revoking a green card over political views is illegal. Protesting genocide is not a crime,” Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib said.
“If the federal government can disappear a legal US resident without reason or warrant, they can disappear US citizens too,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on X.
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