NLG Condemns the Targeted Detention of Palestinian Student Organizer Mahmoud Khalil

March 12, 2025 - The National Lawyers Guild and its International Committee condemn the escalation of federal repression. The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil demonstrates a dangerous increase in both the criminalization of protest in the United States and the targeting of immigrants. It is also a frightening evolution in the ongoing assault against the movement of students and communities across the globe who have been using their voices to oppose Israel’s decades-long Genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, which, with the support of U.S. imperialism, has only worsened over the past 17 months. Under international law, particularly the Genocide Convention, individuals as well as governments have a duty to prevent and not be complicit in genocide. Instead, the federal government is actively punishing those who oppose it.

We emphasize that the actions of the Department of Homeland Security were unlawful. Agents had no grounds to arrest Mahmoud Khalil and did not produce a warrant, threatening his U.S. Citizen wife with arrest if she tried to intervene. Reportedly, agents hung up the phone on Mahmoud’s attorney when his wife contacted her and put her in touch with the agents. Mahmoud is a graduate student at Columbia University who was actively involved with Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and a Lawful Permanent Resident. As with other immigrants, a Lawful Permanent Resident, or Green-Card holder, is protected by the Constitution, which includes First Amendment Free-Speech rights and Fifth Amendment Due-Process rights.

Mahmoud’s arrest comes in the context of the Trump administration’s new federal initiative to identify organizers active in Palestine solidarity protests who have student visas and target them for deportation. It also follows Columbia University’s crackdown on students organizing against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including a previous attempt to suspend Mahmoud for his activism. In response to threats of deportation and news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would begin approaching people in Columbia’s neighborhood as part of this operation, the university issued guidance advising students, faculty, and staff not to interfere. This marked a reversal of the school’s previous status as a “sanctuary campus,” capitulating to the government’s efforts. The day before ICE officials disappeared and detained him, Mahmoud begged for help from the Columbia administration, citing his fear of abduction and intervention and urging the University to protect him from being targeted. The school never responded.

When university administrators collaborate with ICE, or any law enforcement entity, they are advancing the agendas of deeply oppressive, fascist, authoritarian state leaders. Only after mass protests and outcry by students, faculty and concerned communities in the wake of Khalil’s arrest did Columbia publish yet another statement voicing its commitment to following the law, while also noting that law enforcement needs a judicial warrant to enter nonpublic parts of the campus.

Although the Trump administration has not publicly laid out the legal authority for the arrest, it appears to be invoking an obscure provision in the McCarthy-era Immigration and Nationality Act (I.N.A. of 1952), which gives the Secretary of State sweeping power to expel Non-U.S. Citizens. That provision states that any “[immigrant] whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” The provision is extremely vague and its use weaponizes the I.N.A. to remove people whom the administration disagrees with. Trump’s social media account posted taunting images with the phrase “SHALOM MAHMOUD” after his detention, even as administration officials were quoted in media as saying that they were not arguing that Mahmoud had violated any law.

Mahmoud Khalil is a political prisoner, unlawfully arrested and wrongfully detained. He must be freed. The Trump Administration’s lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to us all. Its assault on Mahmoud and the Palestine solidarity movement will not intimidate us. Opposing Israel’s genocide, apartheid and settler colonialism is NOT antisemitic. We will not allow our government to criminalize resistance to its complicity in human rights abuses and genocide.

Recently, the NLG and its allies issued a statement on the Trump administrations’ targeting of university students and academic workers who participate in protests or speech activity critical of Israeli settler colonialism and genocide, falsely conflating these critiques with anti-Semitism and threatening first amendment and academic freedom rights. The Trump administration is pressuring universities to engage in surveillance of non-citizen students, faculty and staff based on vague “security-related inadmissibility grounds,” including any so-called “unlawful activity.”. These measures will create a climate of fear and suspicion on campuses, chilling political speech that is critical of Israel or supportive of Palestinian rights and liberation. It is unsurprising that the relevant Executive Orders have been praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a move to “combat antisemitism and support for terrorism on U.S campuses.”

The National Lawyers Guild recognizes and emphasizes the fact that repression of speech advocating for liberation is in no way unique to the Trump Administration; the violent crackdowns on student encampments and retaliation against the organizers occurred under the Biden Administration in 2024, and at many points during history of the United States both Democratic and Republican regimes have sought to limit, confine, and punish those who seek to speak truth to power.

We must continue to demand that universities commit to protecting their students, faculty, and staff from state repression, surveillance, and political retaliation. These heightened political attacks not only against students and faculty, but also targeting millions of migrant workers and other vulnerable communities points in the direction of a quick descent into fascism. Universities must not collaborate with state repression.


https://www.nlg.org/national-lawyers-guild-condemns-the-targeted-detention-of-palestinian-student-organizer-mahmoud-khalil-and-reiterates-its-call-for-sanctuary-universities-to-protect-their-students-an/