Congresswoman Jayapal challenges Khalil arrest

The Takeaways:

• The arrest of Palestinian American protester Mahmoud Khalil is a test of Trump’s executive order to deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas.
• In a statement on X, DHS said that Khalil was arrested due to his “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
• The arrest has also been condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union and Knight First Amendment Institute.

The Details:

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) is demanding answers from the Trump administration about the arrest of Palestinian American protestor Mahmoud Khalil. She fears his arrest is a violation of the first amendment right to protest.

In a joint letter with Rep. Jamie Raskin and Rep. Mary Scanlon, Jayapal brought up free speech concerns and the specter of McCarthyism while condemning Khalil’s arrest and detention.

Khalil’s arrest has been the first test of the Trump administration’s hardline promise to crackdown on pro-Palestine student protestors under the guise of antisemitism, as proclaimed in an executive order signed in January, just ten days after he took office.

The letter was endorsed by over 100 other members of Congress, and addressed to Kristi Noem, Homeland Secretary, and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. The signers have demanded answers by March 27.

The Khalil arrest was also condemned by civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Khalil, a recent graduate student at Columbia University, was arrested last Friday in the lobby of his New York apartment complex by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), NPR reported earlier this week.

The officers appear to have been under the misperception that Khalil was on a student visa. In fact, Khalil is a green card holder and married to a US citizen who is pregnant with their first child. Khalil is currently under ICE detention in Louisiana.

In a statement on X, DHS said that Khalil was arrested due to his “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Rubio, the Secretary of State, reinforced the message, also on X, stating that the administration intended to strip immigrants who supported Hamas of their status and to deport them.

Yesterday, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary at DHS, said in a Morning Edition interview that Khalil had promoted “antisemitism activity” at the university, and “supported Hamas,” and thereby had lost his status as a student visa holder. However, despite the interviewer reminding him that Khalil was no longer a student visa holder, but rather a permanent resident, Edgar did not amend his statement.

Last year, during the peak of the student protests against Israel’s actions in the Gaza war, Khalil became prominent due to his role as the main negotiator with Columbia administrators. Irie Sentner, who covered the Columbia protests as a student reporter, wrote in Politico that Khalil represented the student body in their demands that Columbia divest from Israel, despite his fears that he would be stripped of his immigration status.

For the moment, Khalil’s deportation has been blocked by Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York, in a case filed against ICE where Khalil is being represented by attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights, among others.

DHS used Trump’s executive order from January to justify their arrest of Khalil. However, according to a New York Times report, the administration plans to justify their intended deportations based on an obscure legal statute in the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the Secretary of State to deport legal aliens they deem as threats to national security.

Jayapal’s letter challenges the use of this statue, asking four specific questions about its use in Khalil’s case.

“How many times has section 237(a)(4)(C) been used to place a lawful permanent resident in removal proceedings in the last 25 years?” the letter asks.

In the meantime, despite Jayapal’s letter and outrage from civil rights groups, the administration is continuing on this trajectory. As of today, a second Palestinian student, who had also been involved in pro-Gaza protests, was arrested by ICE officials.

Jayapal is the ranking member in a subcommittee of the judiciary committee that deals with immigration.