Imagine you're returning home from dinner with your partner. Without warning, men grab you and demand you get in their SUV. They refuse to produce ID, lie about why they’re manhandling you and won’t tell you—or your lawyers—where they’re taking you. You go from one detention center to another, and within 24 hours you’re in a gruesome prison 1,400 miles from home, unable to speak privately to your lawyers. 

You soon find out that you’re being arrested and possibly deported—even though you’re a legal permanent resident—because you’ve protested the U.S.'s foreign policy. And you begin to imagine a country in which anyone, citizen or non-citizen, whatever their legal status, could be arrested and expelled—or even worse—at any time or any place, simply for saying something the government doesn’t like. 

That is the story of Mahmoud Khalil, arrested on the night of March 8 in front of his wife who is eight months pregnant. He was spirited off to Louisiana in the dead of night, with neither family nor lawyers notified. Mahmoud was a main negotiator for the Columbia University students protesting the U.S. backing for the Israeli genocide in Gaza over the past year and half, and the university’s complicity in that genocide. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is trying to deport him, using a little-known and even less-used obscure provision of U.S. law as his backing—a point we’ll return to a little later.

What is different—and what is inspiring, and has to be pushed forward and linked to massive struggle against the whole Trump/MAGA fascist agenda—is the outpouring of support for Mahmoud. This has included thousands at rallies and in the streets, as well as over 100 arrested with Jewish Voice for Peace in a sit-in at Trump Tower.

16 Days in ICE Detention and Counting

RefuseFascism.org has written that:

Khalil’s arrest is a turning point. It is a leap towards the consolidation of a different kind of country – a fascist America. When the rule of law becomes moot – when what is permissible to speak or do is at the say so of Trump and his minions – that must be the wake-up call for us act as one. When the business of the government is bulldozing the rule of law and cementing a fascist order, there must be no business as usual.

At this writing, Mahmoud Khalil—again, a green-card holding, legal permanent resident—remains locked up in a notorious immigration detention center in Louisiana, 16 days after he was illegally snatched off the streets of New York by ICE agents. 

The struggle to free Mahmoud is a critical battle right now, with potentially enormous impact. If the Trump fascists get away deporting Mahmoud, it could establish their “right” to lock up anyone who opposes them and terrorize others into silence. As Mahmoud wrote in a letter from detention: 

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

The Fierce Legal Battle Unfolding

The legal battle around Mahmoud’s detention is proceeding on a number of fronts.

Mahmoud’s legal team won an initial victory on March 10, when Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an injunction preventing the Trump regime from deporting Mahmoud while his case was being heard. 

Instead of charging Mahmoud with a crime, the Trump regime is invoking a rarely cited provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act giving the Secretary of State the power to order noncitizens deported if he or she believes their "presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences...”

This argument is a giant step toward criminalizing and suppressing any criticism or protest against any U.S. actions around the world, and a lawless ripping up of basic rights that are supposed to be guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

Mahmoud’s lawyers initially filed a legal petition arguing that the government’s whole case against Mahmoud should be thrown out because his “detention violates his constitutional rights, including free speech and due process, and goes beyond the government’s legal authority.”¹

On March 19, Judge Furman ruled that this motion should be heard in New Jersey, not in Louisiana as the government argued.² (The Trump regime is continuing to fight to have the case heard in Louisiana, and Mahmoud remains held in Louisiana.) 

Mahmoud’s team has also filed motions to have Mahmoud held in New Jersey, not Louisiana; to have him released from custody while he fights his case; and to prevent the government from further retaliation against him while the case plays out. His team is also separately fighting his immigration case in Louisiana, where an April 8 hearing is scheduled. 

At this writing no hearings have been scheduled in the New Jersey district court, and there is much about this case and how it will unfold that remains clouded in uncertainty, in large part due to the lies, misinformation and stonewalling from the Trump/MAGA fascist regime. 

The Next Weeks Are Critical

Over the next weeks as Mahmoud Khalil’s case unfolds, the struggle to free him must broaden, deepen and become more determined. Campuses need to roil with people standing up for Mahmoud Khalil and against collaboration with the Trump fascist regime.

RefuseFascism.org calls for:

Uniting from many different viewpoints and perspectives, fostering a collective spirit of courage and righteous fury and willingness to make the necessary sacrifices, for the greater good of freeing Mahmoud Khalil and defeating this fascism, we in our millions can become the force powerful enough to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism.

In The Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.

The Fascist Trump Regime Must Go!