Mahmoud Khalil did all the things by the e-book. The 30-year-old Palestinian got here to america to review, accomplished his grasp’s diploma at an Ivy League college, married a U.S. citizen and obtained authorized everlasting residency. Final 12 months, as college students throughout the nation known as on their universities to divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khalil led negotiations on behalf of the Columbia College Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. Fellow college students said he was affected person and strategic in conversations with directors, and he spoke tactfully in interviews with the media. Whereas elected officers decried pupil protesters for shielding their identities, Khalil usually appeared unmasked, turning into a public face for CUAD’s calls for.
These are the issues that the Gaza solidarity motion’s critics have demanded from pupil protesters with a purpose to win their respect. Khalil did all of them. He exercised his constitutional proper to free speech and has not been charged with any crime. And but, on March 8, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed up at Khalil’s dwelling and arrested him anyway. The brokers advised Khalil’s spouse, who’s eight months pregnant, that the State Division had revoked his pupil visa; when she knowledgeable them that he in reality holds a inexperienced card, the ICE officers stated the State Division was canceling that as a substitute.
Donald Trump made it clear that this second was coming. He has repeatedly pledged to deport worldwide college students who participated in pro-Palestine protests, falsely casting the protesters as “pro-jihadist.” On Monday, Trump declared that Khalil’s case was “the primary arrest of many to come back.” Whereas a federal choose has stayed Khalil’s deportation, the Columbia graduate’s unlawful arrest is a chilling milestone within the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on dissent.
I emphasize Khalil’s mainstream respectability right here, not as a result of I consider there’s one single “proper” option to protest, however as a result of it underscores what human rights advocates have been warning about for many years: The systematic erosion of constitutional protections within the wake of 9/11 has at all times been a risk to everybody’s civil liberties, not simply these engaged in acts of mass violence.
When former President George W. Bush declared a “struggle on terror” in 2001, his administration — largely with the help of Congress — ushered in a brand new period of expanded govt energy and a blatant disregard for constitutional rights. Bush launched the President’s Surveillance Program in secret, which directed the Nationwide Safety Company to conduct illegal digital spying on U.S. residents, together with warrantless phone-tapping and the mining of web knowledge. Congress handed the PATRIOT Act, with little to no debate, drastically increasing the federal government’s surveillance powers. In the meantime, a parallel legal authorized system took form, as Bush ordered the creation of secretive navy tribunals with restricted oversight to strive detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. Torture strategies have been greenlit — by officers at among the highest ranges of presidency — in violation of worldwide legislation. All through this, the Bush administration used the unitary executive theory to defend a broad interpretation of “govt privilege” and exempt its actions and deliberations from public view.
Authorized students have repeatedly pointed to the Bush administration’s so-called struggle on terror as a turning level within the enlargement of presidential authority. Vice President Dick Cheney himself said that the Bush administration’s actions would restore the presidency to “the correct scope” of its powers.
However making a terrorism exception to the Structure was at all times going to come back again round to hang-out dissenters. As Trump has made abundantly clear, accusations of terrorism will be levied baselessly to suppress dissent and consolidate political energy. So far, the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) — which was itself created throughout Bush’s tenure — has accused Khalil solely of main “actions aligned to Hamas,” a chosen terrorist group, however has not clarified what these actions have been and even what “aligned to” means in apply. Offering materials help for terrorism is illegitimate, however this has a particular definition underneath U.S. legislation — supplying cash, weapons, coaching, housing, and different sources to designated terrorist organizations. Even passing out flyers with Hamas logos — one thing the White Home just lately claimed, with out proof, that Khalil did — wouldn’t meet the “materials help” bar.
In fact, the Bush legacy can be certainly one of baseless terrorism accusations, notably towards Muslim and Arab males. The post-9/11 Nationwide Safety Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) required noncitizen males from greater than two dozen, primarily Muslim-majority international locations to register with the DHS earlier than getting into the U.S. and have their whereabouts tracked whereas within the nation. The purported anti-terrorism effort surveilled greater than 80,000 folks but never secured a single terrorism conviction in its 10 years of operation; about 13,000 people have been, nevertheless, put by deportation proceedings.
NSEERS was suspended in 2011 and dismantled utterly by 2016, however loads of different federal authorities surveillance packages have cropped as much as take its place. As The Verge reported, ICE can entry the deal with knowledge of most People by their utility data and sweep up private data by a sprawling community of state, native and federal authorities databases. A 2022 report by Georgetown Legislation found that, since its founding in 2003, ICE has dramatically expanded its spying powers and now operates as a “home surveillance company.”
“ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that permits it to drag detailed dossiers on practically anybody, seemingly at any time,” the report’s authors word. “In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — with none judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing private details about the overwhelming majority of individuals dwelling within the U.S.” ICE in all probability solely wanted to know Khalil’s identify to find him at his Columbia College-owned condo.
When Barack Obama grew to become president in 2008, he notably declined to stroll again Bush-era surveillance powers or prosecute these concerned in torturing detainees at Guantánamo, claiming he needed to “look ahead, not backward.” Biden’s administration additional entrenched and expanded the federal authorities’s energy to conduct digital surveillance.
Trump’s try and deport Khalil attracts from and builds upon this legacy. That is the norm of presidential energy in 2025 — drastic authorities overreach, mass warrantless surveillance, the weaponization of terrorism accusations to suppress First Modification exercise. With a fascist in workplace, assaults on civil liberties will probably be escalated, and Muslim and Arab communities will bear the brunt of the administration’s repression.
On March 11, Khalil’s spouse issued an announcement. It paints an image of a scene that Trump has promised will quickly play out repeatedly throughout the nation. “U.S. immigration ripped my soul from me after they handcuffed my husband and compelled him into an unmarked automobile,” wrote Khalil’s spouse. “As an alternative of placing collectively our nursery and washing child garments in anticipation of our first little one, I’m left sitting in our condo, questioning when Mahmoud will get an opportunity to name me from a detention heart.”
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