The Trump administration is continuing its authoritarian incursion into our country's educational institutions, commencing its promised crackdown on student activists engaged in pro-Palestinian activity. On Saturday night, around 8:30 p.m., agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and prominent pro-Palestine campus activist still living in housing owned by the university. The agents detaining Khalil refused to tell his pregnant wife, a U.S. citizen, or his lawyers why they were arresting him, first insisting that his student visa had been revoked by the State Department, and then, upon finding out Khalil had a green card, telling Khalil's lawyers over the phone that his permanent residency had been revoked as well. Now, according to Khalil's attorneys, federal authorities are refusing to disclose where he is being held.
What is crystal clear is that federal authorities detained Khalil because of his prominent role in Columbia's pro-Palestinian student activism. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote in a statement on Sunday that Khalil's arrest was "in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism" and that he had "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization," equating organizing a protest on the campus of the college you attend to directly collaborating with terrorists.
It's not surprising that this crackdown happened at Columbia University, given the persistent and sustained cowardice that the school's leadership has displayed at every turn, repeatedly sacrificing foundational academic priorities such as free speech, healthy debate, and a safe learning environment in order to appease anti-Palestinian interests that don't actually really care about "antisemitism on campus." In a way, this is always exactly what was going to happen there. Still, Columbia's continued appeasement at every possible opportunity couldn't even stop the university from getting significant federal funds yanked away from it.
Khalil was one of several pro-Palestinian Columbia students investigated by a new and opaquely operated university disciplinary committee. In Khalil's case, several of the university's charges revolved around things that he'd posted on social media. "They just want to show Congress and right-wing politicians that they're doing something, regardless of the stakes for students," Khalil told the Associated Press a few days before he was detained. He added, "It's mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech." His arrest also follows the news that the Trump administration will be pulling around $400 million in funding and contracts from the university, with newly confirmed DOE head Linda McMahon citing Columbia's alleged failure to address a climate of fear on campus—not the freshly realized existential fears of pro-Palestinian students, but the same concerns about antisemitic harassment that have justified the ongoing persecution of anyone expressing anti-Zionist beliefs since well before Trump assumed office.