The Case of Mahmoud Khalil: Trump Aims to Destroy the First Amendment and Deport Legal Residents to Defend a Genocide

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Over the last 18 months, the veneer of civilization has worn so thin that the darkness is pouring in, threatening to engulf us all.

It all began, of course, on October 7, 2023 — not with the attacks by Hamas and other militants in southern Israel, but with Israel’s response, which, almost immediately, very evidently involved implementing the “Final Solution”, with the full support of the US and most other western countries, to what was perceived as the long-standing “problem” of the Palestinians refusing to patiently and non-violently submit to a grotesque system of apartheid, to being expelled from their land, or imprisoned within it, or to being murdered indiscriminately, or imprisoned arbitrarily in brutal and fundamentally lawless prisons at the hands of their aggressors — monstrous injustices played out incessantly over the previous 75 years.

In all of the violence between Israel and the Palestinians in the long decades since the brutal, blood-soaked founding of the State of Israel in 1948, when 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and 750,000 exiled, nothing — not even the 1,139 deaths on October 7 (even discounting the as yet untold number of those who were killed by the Israelis themselves under the Hannibal Doctrine), or the more than 2,300 Palestinians killed in the longest of Israel’s previous military assaults on Gaza, for seven weeks in 2014 — can compare with the almost entirely relentless slaughter and destruction of the last 554 days, in which almost the entirety of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, and, at the barest minimum, over 50,000 people have been killed, most of whom were civilians.

Not content with engaging in the industrial-scale slaughter of civilians on an unprecedented scale, gleefully advocating genocide while pretending it is the world’s only perpetual victim, and has an infinite right to “defend itself” without any constraints whatsoever on its actions, Israel has also worked assiduously to promote its narrative in the west, having spent decades embedding itself in the corridors of power, and in newsrooms, and also, in recent years, aggressively promoting a legally-implemented definition of antisemitism that involves not, as it should, targeting the sweeping and indiscriminate hatred of an entire people that typifies all forms of racism, but by pretending that antisemitism actually means opposing the actions of the Israeli government, even when, as has been the case for the last 18 months, that government is manifestly engaging in a genocide.

Israel’s strongest supporter by far is the United States of America, which, under Joe Biden, unconditionally supported the genocide, providing around two-thirds of the weapons used to exterminate tens of thousands of civilians. Under Trump, the extermination policy has, in recent weeks, become even more intense than at any time since the opening weeks of the genocide, as Israel has “opened the gates of hell” on Gaza, shredding the six-week ceasefire in place from January 19 to March 1 in what — despite its claims of wanting the last of its hostages back, demanding the complete surrender of Hamas, and calling for the “voluntary migration” of the entire surviving Palestinian population — is clearly nothing more than the endgame for extermination.

The remaining population of the Gaza Strip now faces murder on four fronts, all screamingly illegal and soul-shredding in their manifestation — death through starvation, death through dehydration, death through the complete destruction of Gaza’s entire healthcare system, or death through the renewed bombing that resumed, with savage intensity, four weeks ago.

The targeting of Mahmoud Khalil

While all of this has been happening, the Trump administration has aggressively stepped up its support for Israel at home, seeking to deport legal US residents and visa holders that it regards as a security threat because of their vocal but non-violent opposition to Israel’s genocide.

This assault on the freedom of speech is a direct threat to the cherished First Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted on December 15, 1791, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The significance of freedom of speech — distinguishing countries that claim to respect the rule of law from openly authoritarian and intolerant dictatorships — can be summarized in a quote by the English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868-1956), who, encapsulating the beliefs of the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire, wrote what is widely cited as the cornerstone of the principle of freedom of speech: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

On the evening of March 8, the Trump administration declared war on the First Amendment, when Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident who had recently completed a master’s degree at Columbia University, was abducted from the lobby of the university-owned apartment block in New York where he lived, and was subsequently “disappeared”, eventually ending up in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana.

There, he was held incommunicado for several days, with no ability to communicate either with his lawyers, or with his wife, Noor Abdalla, a US citizen, born and raised in the US. The two married in 2023, and Abdalla, who was present when her husband was abducted, is pregnant with their first child, whose birth is imminent. Please read the statement he made about his experiences, which, when he was finally allowed to communicate with his family and his lawyers, he dictated over the phone.

Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian refugees, was targeted by the Trump administration because he had been involved in the prominent protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza that took place on the grounds of Columbia University last year. In particular, he was a negotiator in discussions between the student organization Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and university officials regarding divestment from Israel, with a referendum undertaken in March 2024 delivering majority support amongst students for revoking all investment in and financial ties with Israel, closing the university’s recently-opened “Global Center” in Tel Aviv, and also ending its dual degree program with Tel Aviv University.

As a visa holder when Israel’s genocide in Gaza began, only securing a green card in 2024, Khalil had avoided involvement in protests that could be perceived as endangering his status, although it was, in any case, evident that his strengths were in negotiation rather than confrontation. Prior to attending Columbia, he had worked for many years for the British government in Beirut, on what a former colleague, the British diplomat Andrew Waller, described as a “flagship grant programme that brings foreign students to study at UK universities, as well as in a support role for which he helped to inform and shape British foreign policy on Syria through his knowledge and Arabic skills.” Waller described Khalil as “a thoughtful individual and highly valued colleague”, who was “extensively vetted” before his employment, and was “well liked.”

For authoritarian regimes, however, articulate, thoughtful, intelligent and likeable individuals like Mahmoud Khalil pose a particular threat, because they so effortlessly attract support for the wronged and marginalized, in marked contrast to Columbia’s cowardly or genocide-complicit senior management, or the whinging self-pitying tantrums of genocidal man-children like Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. While the senior management capitulated to Zionist demands for the suppression of student activism, or willingly embraced it, Davidai appears to have been directly involved in Khalil’s abduction.

In an email to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong on March 7, Khalil wrote, “Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai [see here and here] and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.”

Khalil was also targeted by the Zionist organization Betar, followers of Zeev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), a Russian-born Zionist militant, which really ought to be designated as a terrorist organization. Betar have been actively threatening individuals, including Jewish people, who they regard as traitors, and have also been involved in creating lists of individuals for deportation submitted to the pliable, dim-witted and dangerously pro-Israeli Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

On January 30, Betar posted a video on X featuring an interview with Khalil, in which, in their accompanying text, they lied that he had said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” (he said no such thing), bragged that ICE was “aware of his home address and whereabouts”, and added, “We have provided all his information to multiple contacts. He’s on our deport list!”

Deviously invoking “adverse foreign policy consequences” to justify Khalil’s deportation

While everything about Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction, and the Trump administration’s shameful intention to deport him, is a direct assault on the First Amendment, it is not being framed that way. In a post on X on March 9, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism”, but the administration has also demonstrated that it is too cowardly to even attempt to defend its claims that criticizing Israel’s genocide is antisemitic.

Instead, the State Department, under Marco Rubio, has chosen to deviously seek to deport Khalil under a barely-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 — Section 237 (a)(4)(C) (i), which gives the Secretary of State the authority to deport non-citizens when they have “reasonable ground to believe that [their] presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Not uncoincidentally, the passage of the INA — and the inclusion of that particular provision — coincided with the hysterical intolerance of the McCarthy-era witch hunts against suspected “Communists.”

In the new era of McCarthyism aimed at opponents of Israel’s genocide, the Trump administration is seeking to hide behind “national security” secrecy to enable it to deport any legal resident who dares to even suggest that Palestinian civilians have the right not to be slaughtered indiscriminately by the State of Israel, and that Israel itself ought to be held accountable for its actions.

One great irony of this, which cannot be overstated, is that the Trump administration is seeking to shred the First Amendment not to protect the US, but to protect a foreign country, Israel, a position that lays bare how the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, prioritizes Israel’s interests over its own, in what really ought to be seen as a betrayal of America’s self-interest — or even as an act of treason.

Another truly alarming aspect of the Trump administration’s intolerance is that what is being undermined is not only freedom of speech, but, essentially, freedom of thought.

As the US authorities begin scouring the social media and internet histories of vast numbers of “aliens” resident in the US, to discover whether they have ever expressed so much as the mildest form of support for the notion that it is wrong to support the extermination of the Palestinian people, it is not too far-fetched to suggest that everyone will eventually be obliged to swear allegiance not to the US Constitution, but to the State of Israel, and that those who refuse will be punished, and, if feasible, deported, a situation that could apply to dual nationals who would have their US citizenship removed if they fail to comply.

At present, we’re some way off from this truly nightmarish scenario, although it is, genuinely, the logical end point of the “Israel First” trajectory of the supposed “America First” presidency of Donald Trump.

A crucial legal lifeline

While an immigration judge in Louisiana, Judge Jamee Comans, approved Khalil’s deportation on Friday (April 11), rubber-stamping Marco Rubio’s absurd and unsubstantiated claims, his case is far from over.

Shortly after his abduction, a habeas corpus case was filed on his behalf in the District Court in New York, which Judge Jesse M. Furman moved to New Jersey on March 19 after it became evident that, briefly, between Khalil’s initial abduction and his transfer to Louisiana, he had been held in a facility in New Jersey (Judge Furman’s 33-page order is here). On April 1 Judge Michael E. Farbiarz of the New Jersey District Court accepted Khalid’s case (his 67-page order is here), after both judges refused to accept government arguments that a habeas hearing should take place in Louisiana.

Immediately after the immigration hearing, as was noted by the ACLU — which represents Khalil along with Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, Van Der Hout LLP and Washington Square Legal Services — Judge Farbiarz “ordered both the government and Mr. Khalil’s legal team to immediately report to his court … for an update on what transpired.”

As the ACLU added, “At the federal court level, Mr. Khalil’s legal team will continue to seek bail, as well as a preliminary injunction (PI) that would immediately release him from custody and allow him to reunite with his family in New York while his immigration case proceeds. If granted, the PI would also block President Trump’s policy of arresting and detaining noncitizens who have engaged in First Amendment protected activity in support of Palestinian rights.”

This is hugely important, because, on March 28, Marco Rubio boasted that over 300 students had had their visas revoked since Trump took office, just days after Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was abducted in the street in Somerville, Massachusetts and imprisoned in an ICE detention facility.

As one of Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers, Ramzi Kassem, the co-director of CLEAR, a legal non-profit organization and clinic at CUNY (City University of New York), said after Friday’s ruling, “When the government rips a US permanent resident away from his expecting US citizen wife in the dead of night and moves him a thousand miles away to an administrative court for a rush job of a hearing before a functionary who serves at the pleasure of the President, it comes as no surprise that the outcome is exactly as the government engineered it. But no one should be fooled: all of it is motivated by this government’s desire to silence, punish, and deport Mahmoud for his speech in defense of Palestinian lives and rights. With Mahmoud, we will continue to fight in court and beyond until he is back with his family and community at home in New York.”

Mahmoud Khalil’s many supporters will be hoping that legal challenges aimed at securing his release on bail, so that he can be reunited with his wife for the birth of their child at the end of April, are successful, and also that a preliminary injunction can effect a nationwide stay on the administration’s many other efforts to seize, detain and deport non-citizens “engaged in First Amendment protected activity in support of Palestinian rights.”

Nevertheless, the challenges ahead — both in the immigration court and in federal court — may take many years to resolve, as Jonah Valdez explained for The Intercept here.

Anyone who cares about the First Amendment, about freedom of speech and thought, and about resisting the US’s slide into becoming a vassal state of Israel, directing its energies into oppressing the entire population unless they demonstrate allegiance to Israel and its genocide, needs to be prepared for this long fight.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of the US depends on it.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

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