(LifeSiteNews) — American conservatives and many others were delighted when Donald Trump announced on January 23 that he was issuing a “full and unconditional pardon” for 23 prolife activists languishing in federal prison. The pardons, issued in the Oval Office during the first week of his presidency, were Trump’s answer to the Biden Administration for its arbitrary arrest and prosecution of pro-lifers who had allegedly violated the federal Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act.
The president’s action was accompanied by a Department of Justice memo which began with the following sentence: “President Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the weaponization of the federal government and has recently directed all federal departments and agencies to identify and correct the past weaponization of law enforcement.”
Unfortunately, the White House application of the term “weaponization” has proven highly selective, as Americans learned last week. On Saturday night, March 8, federal immigration authorities in New York arrested a prominent Palestinian student activist, Mahmoud Khalil, in his Manhattan apartment. Khalil had come to federal attention because of his role in organizing protests against Israel on the campus of Columbia University.
The federal agents, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were operating at the behest of the State Department, which intended to revoke what it thought was Khalil’s student visa. In fact, the 30-year-old Khalil, a Palestinian born in Syria, had just completed a graduate school program at Columbia. During discussions with Khalil and his lawyer, the agents were informed that Khalil now had permanent residence status with a green card.
Undaunted, the agents apparently revoked that instead while also threatening to arrest Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.
Khalil’s wife attempted to visit her husband at an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, only to learn that he had been moved to a similar facility – without explanation – in Louisiana. Khalil’s lawyer described that action a “blatantly improper but familiar tactic.”[1]
Ms. Khalil subsequently released a public statement, calling for the release of her husband. “Mahmoud is my rock, he is my home … I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and future father to our baby. I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world…”[2]
Khalil’s American lawyer called his arrest “a clear escalation. The [Trump] administration is following through on its threats.”[3]
To be sure, this was no routine measure by the new Trump administration, but one orchestrated at the highest levels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in an online post the next day that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Likewise, Trump posted online that Khalil’s arrest was the first “of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students. They are paid protestors. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country – never to return again.”
Trump also announced that the government had cancelled $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia University, citing its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Not to be outdone, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education both released supporting statements.
Mahmoud Khalil was certainly one of the driving forces in the Columbia campus protests since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. He served as a negotiator between the students and university officials on terminating the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” erected on campus last year.
A new office of the university brought disciplinary charges against Khalil and dozens of other students “for their pro-Palestinian activism.” The university was also unhappy about Khalil’s involvement in Columbia’s “apartheid divest” initiative, which threatened to impact the school’s endowment by reducing investments in Israel.
Fortunately, on the Monday following his arrest, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that Khalil must not be deported “unless and until the Court orders otherwise.”[4]
It will be compelling to track Khalil’s fate. He apparently has committed no crime. Has Khalil accosted or assaulted Jewish students on campus? Has he interrupted classes or other university activities? Has he vandalized school property? Collected donations for Hamas? Spit on the sidewalk? If he had, it would certainly be shouted from the rooftops by the pro-Israel media in New York, as well as by the Trump administration.
Khalil told the AP “I have around thirteen allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with.”[5] Or perhaps Khalil had “gone over the top” with disparaging remarks about Jews or Zionists, an act that might fall short of a crime but would still draw the attention of authorities. Has he accused the Israelis of genocide in Gaza? If so, that would put him in good company with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both of whom have made that claim.
Has he referred to the Jews as “human animals?” If so, that would place him on a moral par with (now former) Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has applied the term to the Palestinians.
There seems to be no public evidence of such charges. In fact, Khalil told CNN in 2024 that “There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that’s taking different forms, and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism (are) some of these forms.”[6]
If the Trump administration has evidence against Khalil, it is surely being kept closely held. Allegedly, Secretary of State Rubio was “presented with intelligence” that determined that Khalil was a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, DHS claims to be investigating those who are “actively engaging in supporting Hamas.” If Khalil (and others) were speaking about the near-famine conditions in Gaza or distributing leaflets on Israel’s current land grabs on the West Bank, would that be sufficient to charge them with “supporting Hamas” or “threatening American national security?”[7] It now seems probable.
On what grounds can Mahmoud Khalil be deported? By law, the primary source is in 8 US Code 1227: Deportable Aliens. This section lists a plethora of reasons for deporting aliens. Still, I will focus on one discussed in a recent Fox News program about Khalil, possibly due to a helpful hint from the Trump Administration.
Section (a)(4)(c) of USC 1227 states as follows: “An alien 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.” If Khalil is charged with a violation of this section, what “adverse foreign policy consequences” did he cause?
One could conclude that he is calling attention to America’s joined-at-the-hip relationship with a nation that is committing serious human rights violations. To a fair-minded U.S. government, that would be regarded as a favor, not a threat.
In any event, if Trump is serious about deporting Khalil, his administration will have to deliver serious and specific evidence to a court, not platitudes such as “leading activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”[8]
As pointed out by Khalil’s lawyers, he will have the considerable weight of the First Amendment (free speech) on his side. “He was taken by US government agents in retaliation, essentially, for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the US government and of the Israeli government,” noted his attorney.[9]
The arrest of Mohammad Khalil may be considered the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war against pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist activists. It is now gearing up for a nationwide campaign to apparently muzzle free speech about Palestinian rights under the guise of combating antisemitism.
On January 30, the White House released a fact sheet entitled “Combating Anti-Semitism in the United States.” Among other points, it documented Trump’s commitment to deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihad protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Note that “sympathy” for Hamas is sufficient for deportation. That document builds on Executive Order 13899 (Combating Antisemitism) from the first Trump administration, which had not been repealed.
In February, Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced that it will be paying visits to ten college campuses, including Columbia, where antisemitic incidents had occurred since October 2023. Those ten are among a larger group of 60 schools which the Trump administration announced are currently under investigation for “antisemitic discrimination and harassment.” Trump, as usual, is playing hardball.
It should be noted that both Trump’s Executive Order 13899 (from 2019) and House Resolution 894 (from 2023) make reference to a “working definition of antisemitism” crafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
As noted by my LifeSiteNews colleague Professor Matthew Tsakanikas in an article last December, the net effect of HR 894, strongly promoted by the Zionist Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, was to turn anti-Zionism into hate speech.[10] While neither document has the force of law, the net effect of both on free speech is bound to be chilling.
Mahmoud Khalil may be just the first of many victims under this new repressive climate, where free speech is trumped by “weaponization.”
I have no idea whether Mahmoud Khalil is guilty or not based on a fair hearing under U.S. law. I am well aware that America’s universities are havens for many aliens (legal and illegal) who represent legitimate threats to the United States based on existing law. However, given the meager information released since his arrest, I am not convinced that Khalil is one of them.
The arrest of Khalil, following the preparatory actions of the Trump administration cited above, smacks of a determined effort by team Trump to clear America’s campuses of any criticism of “our closest ally” and sympathy for the wretched Palestinians. It is supremely ironic that, in his speech in Munich last month, Vice President JD Vance chastised the Europeans about their threats “from within,” to include the suppression of free speech.[11]
Donald Trump grossly underestimated the international backlash to his proposal for turning Gaza into a luxury resort. That now appears to be dead in the water. He may have done the same with this initiative.
According to Newsweek, the astonishing number of 800,000 signatures has been garnered on a petition in less than a week for Khalil’s immediate release.[12] A grassroots organization called Jewish Voices for Peace has taken up Khalil’s cause on its website. Almost defiantly, JVP noted that “Trump can’t deport half of all Americans.”And a Gallup poll released this month concluded that less than half of Americans are now “sympathetic” toward Israel.
Compared to Joe Biden, Donald Trump has merely replaced one kind of weaponization for another. While Biden skewed the legal system in favor of “women’s choice,” Trump has done so in defense of Zionist ideology. This is yet more evidence of an emerging Zionist axis between Washington and Jerusalem, one that is bound to tear the U.S. asunder unless it is overcome.
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