Civil liberties organisations and academics have raised alarm at the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, calling it a serious breach of free-speech rights under the administration of President Donald Trump.
“Ostensibly, the moral justification is to combat anti-Semitism, always a noble goal,” Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.
But, Hashemi warned, this justification is being used as a smoke screen to tamp down on pro-Palestinian views in the United States.
“Objectively, what is really happening is an effort to silence all public expression of support for Palestinian human rights to placate right-wing supporters of Israel within the Republican Party,” he said. “That is how this topic should be framed and understood.”
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil on Saturday evening at his university housing, after he and his pregnant wife, an American citizen, returned from an iftar dinner.
His lawyer Amy Greer said he is a lawful permanent resident of the US. Experts have underscored that it is rare for green card holders to be threatened with deportation, except in cases of serious crimes.
Khalil, however, was a prominent figure in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza at the Ivy League university, and Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to expel such protesters from the country.
“Many are not students, they are paid agitators,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday, without offering evidence. He also accused student protesters of participating in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” — again, without proof.
Still, he warned Khalil’s detention would be “the first of many to come”.
“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”