Civil rights advocates are accusing the Trump administration of trampling the First Amendment following the arrest of an immigrant who was involved with pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly showed up at Mahmoud Khalil’s university-owned apartment in Manhattan on Saturday and arrested him without telling him or his pregnant US citizen wife why. They later informed his attorney that they were revoking his green card, claiming that Khalil had “led activities aligned to Hamas” but not charging him with a crime. On Monday, a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation amid a legal battle over his future.
The case may test First Amendment protections, especially for noncitizen legal residents. But it could also have broad implications for every American.
Unless the government has evidence that Khalil committed a crime that it has not yet disclosed, this appears an attempt at punitive action on the basis of political expression, a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. The Free Press reported Monday that, according to an unnamed White House official, the administration sees Khalil as a national security threat but “the allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.”
“If the government has got anything other than just somebody who is saying things they don’t like, they need to show it now, because otherwise, the harm to First Amendment freedoms will be serious,” said Will Creeley, legal director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
What rights does Mahmoud Khalil have?
Khalil’s arrest raises legal questions about whether the Trump administration can revoke his green card based on his role in the protests at Columbia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X on Sunday that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” The government has not offered evidence to back Rubio’s accusation that Khalil is a Hamas supporter.
However, the government’s authority to do so is limited, and civil rights attorneys think that the Trump administration has overstepped in Khalil’s case.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement.
Immigrants living in the US, including those on visas and green cards, have the same right to free expression as any American under the First Amendment.
However, the government can still detain and deport them if they are found to be “inadmissible” on grounds of associating with or offering material support to terrorism, according to Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and director of the think tank’s office at New York University School of Law. (The United States designates Hamas — the Palestinian militant group behind the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel — as a terrorist organization.)
Under federal immigration law, the bar for engaging in “terrorist activity” is high: It can involve hijacking transportation vehicles, assassination, kidnapping and threatening physical harm to those held hostage if the government does not comply with their demands, or threats or conspiracy to commit those acts.
Notably, the first Trump administration believed that rhetoric alone was not enough to meet that bar. In a 2018 internal memo, Justice Department lawyers wrote that “lawful permanent residents very likely could not be excluded or removed for expressing mere philosophical support for terrorism or for endorsing the activities of groups whose activities do not implicate the foreign policy interests of the United States.”
In Khalil’s case, it’s not clear if the government is detaining him on the basis of just his speech supporting Palestinians. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the specific grounds for taking Khalil into custody.
He was one of the lead negotiators with the Columbia administration on behalf of pro-Palestine protesters at the university’s Gaza solidarity encampment in spring 2024. He was not involved in the occupation of a university building where protesters were ultimately removed by police.
What is obvious is that the Trump administration is making an example of Khalil. The White House posted on X on Monday calling him “Radical” and promising that his arrest is the first of “many to come.”
Khalil’s arrest came just after the Trump administration cut $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia because of what it described as the university’s failure to respond to antisemitism on its campus, despite the fact the university cracked down harshly on protesters last spring.
A chilling effect on free speech
The fallout at Columbia from Khalil’s arrest has been swift. Students and faculty fear that they, too, could be targeted by the Trump administration — and that the university, concerned about further funding cuts, won’t even come to their defense.
“Many of our faculty are, like Mr. Khalil, permanent residents of the United States, and many of them have said things in the course of their scholarship that the Trump administration finds noxious,” said Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia and executive committee member of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “The attack on Mahmoud Khalil is intended to make them quake in their boots and to make all of us quake in our boots.”
But the implications of the arrest stretch far beyond the university’s campus. Expressing opposition to the war in Gaza is protected by the First Amendment so long as it does not involve criminal conduct. And even if the speaker is accused of criminal conduct, they have the right to a fair hearing and due process.
“You can’t be snatched off the street and arrested without knowing what you’re being arrested for,” Creeley said.
So far, Khalil does not appear to have been afforded those legal protections. And if he is being punished for merely expressing support for Palestinians alone, then there is no telling where the Trump administration will draw the line in targeting political dissent — especially among immigrants, but also among American citizens.
“It just seems like we’re entering a dangerous new stage where the government is interpreting its power extremely expansively in ways that sure look like they extend past the limits of the Bill of Rights,” Creeley said.
