Although Mahmoud Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the United States, the Trump administration says, he is "subject to removal" because Secretary of State Marco Rubio "has determined" that his "presence or activities" would "have serious adverse foreign policy consequences." That vague rationale, which alludes to Khalil's participation in anti-Israel protests as a graduate student at Columbia University, is an open-ended license to expel any of the 13 million people who share his immigration status when they engage in controversial speech.
Khalil, who was arrested in New York City on March 8 and taken to a detention center in Louisiana, has no criminal record, and the Trump administration does not claim he has broken any law. Rather, he has been deemed deportable because of his perceived "support" for Hamas, the terrorist organization that set off the war in Gaza by invading Israel on October 7, 2023.
President Donald Trump, who described Khalil as "a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student," said his detention was "the first arrest of many to come." Students at universities across the country "have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity," he said, and "the Trump Administration will not tolerate it."
