The Abduction of Mahmoud Khalil

“..the first arrest of many to come.”

I believe it’s appropriate now to refer to the present government of the United States not as an “administration” but as a “regime,” with all of that word’s dark and ugly connotations.

On Saturday, March 8th, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized 30-year-old student activist Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia housing in the night. He was taken in front of his pregnant wife, an American citizen, who was threatened with arrest. The agents told Khalil’s lawyer that his visa was being revoked upon orders from the State Department. When his attorney informed them that Khalil was a legal permanent resident—a Green Card holder—they said they were revoking that instead. His attorney and family did not know where he was being held: they thought initially he was in New Jersey but now it appears that he is in a DHS detention facility in Louisiana.

The details here are very important: agents of the state without charging a crime or presenting a clear legal basis have detained a legal resident and are threatening him with deportation. (A Federal judge has halted deportation for now.) These agents were apparently unaware of his legal status in the country. He was clearly targeted for his political activity. The revocation of a Green Card typically requires a hearing before an immigration judge where specific wrongdoing must be demonstrated. The rationale provided thus far by the administration—I’m sorry, the regime—is ad hoc. As reported on Zeteo:

The Trump administration has scrambled to justify Khalil’s detention – but has yet to say explicitly what, if anything, Khalil has been charged with. First, the Department of Homeland Security referred Zeteo to the White House, which did not respond to a request for comment. Later, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed in a statement that ICE detained Khalil “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.” Without providing evidence, McLaughlin claimed Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas.”

Let’s be clear: even if Khalil’s activities did meet someone’s definition of antisemitism, the president of the United States cannot “prohibit antisemitism” through executive order or any other device for that matter. Antisemitic speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. Now, this business of “Hamas aligned” might appear to put Khalil in jeopardy of supporting a designated foreign terrorist organization, but the law is clear: it’s only unlawful for a person to provide “material support” for an FTO, which is clearly defined as “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who maybe or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.” No such charges have been made public.

What’s doubly disturbing about Khalil’s arrest is that it appears to have been made in a climate of mob activity and at the incitement of demagogues. Known agitator Shai Davidai has attacked Khalil repeatedly on social media media and called for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deport him. And Khalil was targeted by the group Betar on one of their deportation hit lists. Betar is a fascist organization founded in the 1920s by Revisionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and at one time received support and training from Mussolini’s Italy. They are labeled as an extremist organization by the Anti-Defamation League, which has shamefully endorsed Khalil’s abduction. If organs of state security and petty demagogues and mob leaders are acting in concert to crack down on dissent it is clearly and unequivocally fascist. I don’t mean this to be a polemic: it is just the only appropriate term from political science and theory for this type of practice.

The politics of the situation are murky and perhaps deliberately provocative. The White House made a crude and inflammatory post that included a photo of Khalil and the words “Shalom Mahmoud.” Rather than fight antisemitism, this seems almost calculated to promote theories that the U.S. government works on behalf of Zionists. Perhaps the regime took this moment to take a hard line because it was announced that they had engaged in direct talks with Hamas and this is a sop to convince ideologues that Trump isn’t soft on Palestinians. And perhaps the regime hopes to provoke disruptive protests to further justify and deepen its project of squeezing and trying to break universities, part of its broader assault on the independence of American civil society.

Another important context is the recent explosion of real, classic antisemitism on the American right, with Holocaust deniers being invited on regime ally Joe Rogan, Candace Owens appearing on the Theo Von show, and the revelation that a 26-year-old Defense Department staffer repeatedly tweeted out antisemitic conspiracy theories. So perhaps this regime is at pains to distract from these unsavory facts and prove its bona fides to those right-wing Jews—political idiots whose understanding of antisemitism is usually limited to who or what is anti- or pro-Israel—who might be getting a little uncomfortable now.

Here’s the most important thing about this whole affair: The state cannot make it up as it goes along. It can’t seize people in the night and invent flimsy pretexts later. And if it does, then we no longer live under the rule of law, we live in a police state. Don’t kid yourself: They will not stop at non-citizens. Trump threatened that Khalil’s arrest would be “the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil is a soft target: a “foreigner” who is part of a controversial political movement on an Ivy League campus. Unfortunately, he might not get a ton of public support for these reasons, but whatever one’s beliefs or reservations about his specific politics or activism, it’s absolutely vital to insist on due process and Constitutional rights. This goes far beyond any specific movement or political group. We’re talking about our basic freedoms now.