Mahmoud Khalil is a recent graduate of Columbia University and a legal permanent resident of the United States. He is also of Palestinian heritage, and emerged as a public face of Columbia students who demonstrated during last years' pro-Palestine protests.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Khalil Saturday night. Despite having a green card, Khalil was sent to a detention center in Louisiana without notice to his family or attorney. So far, a judge has blocked his deportation; his case will be heard Wednesday.
Khalil has not been arrested for a crime. But the Trump administration has characterized his protest activism, which included acting as a lead negotiator for student protesters with the university, as pro-Hamas: President Trump posted on Truth Social that his arrest is the first of “many to come” as the administration cracks down on last year’s student protesters.
An executive order Trump signed in January that promises to combat antisemitism also aims to deport “resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests,” according to a related White House fact sheet. This is the first known ICE arrest of one of last year’s student protesters on such grounds.
Khalil’s status as a green card holder has raised questions about how it is that a legal, permanent resident of the U.S. can be detained for deportation by ICE.
“All people with lawful permanent residents, otherwise known as green card holders, are subject to what’s called the grounds of deportability,” said Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic and clinical associate professor of law. “Every...lawful permanent resident can be deported for certain grounds.”
Reisz believes there are two potential grounds for deportation that ICE may argue for: if an individual has been “deemed to support a terrorist organization,” or if they pose a threat to national foreign policy.
“The government could argue that this graduate student at Columbia, in protesting and in his actions, was supporting Hamas, which is a terrorist organization,” Reisz said.
The threat to national foreign policy provision is rare, and is only supposed to be used in certain cases. Additionally, someone can’t be deemed adverse to U.S. foreign policy and interests based upon having participated in protests. But in this case, one person can overrule that, Reisz said.
“If the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, specifically finds that this person’s actions are contrary to the interests of the United States when it comes to foreign policy, then that person can still be deported, regardless of whether they engaged in conduct that was protected by the First Amendment in the United States,” Reisz said.
In relation to the same Trump order, yesterday the U.S. Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities, including USC, warning they could lose federal funding if they fail to protect Jewish students on campus. Reisz said taken together, these two actions suggest where the Trump Administration is leading.
“I think that that the President is attempting to kind of chill people’s first amendment rights by framing it in a way that that that makes it seem like it’s unlawful,” Reisz said. “People aren’t going to want to challenge their deportations in immigration court, they’re just going to not participate in protests.”
A Trump antisemitism task force related to his January order plans to visit 10 college campuses where students protested last year, including USC. Task force members will meet with university officials and others to discuss “whether remedial action is warranted,” according to a Department of Justice statement.
Deterring the expression of “a certain political view that is unpopular is going to be is what the president’s doing with this, with this task force,” Reisz added
Whether USC or its students will face any repercussions is unclear.