ICE officials have arrested a legal resident of the United States for helping to organize protests on a University campus. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), sadly, is cheering them on.
Green card holder and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE agents, who, when informed of his legal status, detained him anyway.
Khalil, who helped organize the school's pro-Palestinian protests, was hauled away from his university-owned apartment Saturday night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after he was told his student visa was being revoked, his attorney said in a statement to NBC News. Attorney Amy Greer added that ICE was informed that Khalil is a permanent resident with a green card but still "detained him anyway."
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Trump said Khalil's arrest was the first of many more 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," he wrote on Truth Social. "Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again."
NBC News
The ADL was not quick to call out this injustice:
Other civil rights groups are less biased, and more outraged:
The New York Civil Liberties Union said Khalil's detainment was an "extreme attack on his First Amendment rights."
"Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus," a statement read. "Political speech should never be a basis for punishment, or lead to deportation."
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the decision to arrest him was "lawless."
NBC News
The US Government, however, intends to consider "anti-Israeli atrocities" to be "anti-semitic" and plans to start illegally revoking people's immigration status over it.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was arrested in coordination with ICE and the State Department "in support of President Trump's executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism" and because he "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post Sunday on X that the administration would be revoking the visas and green cards "of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported."
NBC News
Previously:
• Letter to my black daughter under a Trump presidency
