On Saturday in Hastings, Concerned Families of Westchester will hold a rally/vigil in support of Mahmoud Khamil, the Columbia University graduate who was arrested by ICE and is now in custody in Louisiana, facing deportation. We will demand freedom for Mahmoud. More generally, we will raise the alarm that the Trump-Musk administration, in arresting green-card holder Mahmoud, is attacking some basic Constitutional protections that affect all of us.
The rally will take place at the VFW Plaza in Hastings, on Warburton Ave. at the corner of Spring St. Our rally will start at 12 noon and end at 1 pm. Please join us.
Some background
As most of you know. Mahmoud Khalil was a participant in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last spring, The demands of the students focused on Columbia’s holding of financial interests in corporations engaged with Israel; they demanded that Columbia divest from these corporations. Mahmoud Khalil was one of the negotiators and spokespeople for the students, and he often spoke for the students in negotiations with the university. He is universally reported to have been a helpful presence, participating in no violence himself.
On Monday and Tuesday, Democracy Now! Aired programs detailed the events that ended up with Mahmoud Khalil in jail in Louisiana:
ICE Detains Green Card Holder over Columbia University Gaza Activism [March 10, 2025]
---- Immigration agents with the Department of Homeland Security have detained a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University in New York. Mahmoud Khalil, who is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, is a green card holder and is married to a U.S. citizen; his wife is eight months pregnant. Immigration officials told Khalil’s lawyer his green card was being revoked. Khalil recently graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and his whereabouts are unknown. “The [Trump] administration doesn’t seem to know exactly how to justify this very haphazard, unilateral move,” says Prem Thakker, political correspondent and columnist for Zeteo. The arrest comes as Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university, despite Columbia’s suppression of pro-Palestine activism. The Trump administration doesn’t “really care about antisemitism or keeping Jews safe. All they care about is crushing dissent,” says Joseph Howley, associate professor of classics at Columbia University. [See the Program]
“This Is All Retaliatory”: Judge Blocks Mahmoud Khalil’s Deportation as Trump Vows More Arrests [March 11, 2025]
---- A federal judge has blocked the deportation of recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S. who was arrested by immigration authorities for helping organize campus solidarity protests with Gaza. He had been receiving daily threats stemming from an online smear campaign launched by pro-Israel activists before his arrest and repeatedly appealed to university administrators for protection. Khalil, who is a Palestinian green card holder, is married to a U.S. citizen. Upon his arrest, he was separated from his pregnant wife and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana, where legal experts say he is more likely to appear before Trump-friendly judges if his case moves forward. “Her husband was abducted before her very eyes [and] disappeared,” says Ramzi Kassem. Kassem is the founder of the legal clinic CLEAR, which is contesting Khalil’s “baseless” detention and Louisiana transfer in New York court. Khalil’s unprecedented arrest makes good on President Trump’s promise to punish antiwar student activists, bringing together his administration’s attacks on free speech, education and immigrant rights. It is “part and parcel” of “Trump’s racist and fascist agenda,” says immigrant rights activist Murad Awawdeh, who adds that the Columbia University administration’s lack of response to Khalil’s high-profile case has been “incredibly shameful.” [See the Program]
TODAY’S COURT HEARING
Today a NYC judge held a hearing to determine whether Mahmoud should be returned to New York and/or set free. A rally took place outside the court – See an extended video here. Below are linked articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post about what happened in court today.
Columbia Activist Has Not Been Allowed to Speak Privately With Lawyers
By Jonah E. Bromwich and Anusha Bayya, New York Times [March 12, 2025]
---- Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate detained by the Trump administration last weekend, have not been able to hold a private conversation with their client since his arrest. That revelation came during a hearing in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, as lawyers for Mr. Khalil and the government appeared in front of a judge, Jesse Furman, to discuss Mr. Khalil’s detention, which has raised concerns about free speech protections amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown. … Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, will attempt to fight the government as it seeks to deport their client, but is it not clear in which court that fight will take place. Judge Furman has ordered the government not to deport Mr. Khalil while his case is pending. But the Wednesday hearing related to the circumstances of Mr. Khalil’s detention, not his legal residency. [Read More]
Effort to deport Columbia student rests solely on Rubio decision
From the Washington Post [March 12, 2025]
---- As the Trump administration moves to deport Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil, the government has so far provided just one reason for doing so: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has determined Khalil’s presence in the United States could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” A government notice for Khalil to appear in a federal immigration court, which was obtained by The Washington Post, provides no other evidence or specific accusations. A court hearing Wednesday, four days after his arrest, yielded no additional information. [Read More]
SOME DEEPER ANALYSIS
We Are Asking the Wrong Questions About Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest
The only relevant question is not “How can the government do this?” It is “How can we who oppose this fascist regime stop it?”
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [March 12, 2025]
---- The most common question I’ve seen in the days since Khalil’s kidnapping is some version of “How can the government do this?” Journalists and lawyers have dutifully responded by explaining or guessing at the government’s “legal” authority to commit such a crime. Many of Trump’s actions are technically illegal, and explaining how he failed to dot the i or cross the t on his latest act of terrorism seems to make people feel better, for some reason. I think people are asking the wrong question, and giving the wrong answer. The government can do this because the government has what scholars call a “monopoly of force,” meaning the government can violently attack people but the people are not legally allowed to violently fight back. This government can use its monopoly of force in this way because the American people elected a fascist dictator to rule over them. That dictator, Donald Trump, promised to do exactly what he is doing. … People expect or hope for the law to restrain Trump and his regime’s use of violence. People keep waiting for Trump to clearly and unambiguously “break” the law, as if doing so will trigger some kind of fail-safe protocol causing the statue of Abraham Lincoln to self-animate out of its chair like a democracy-defending golem. But (as I have written many, many times) the law simply doesn’t work like that. The law is not an objective set of rules that snap into action when they are violated. Instead, the law is an argument. It can be bent, stretched, or straight-up ignored by the side that wins power. [Read More]
(Video) Noura Erakat: Trump’s Abuses & Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Are Products of U.S. Imperialism Coming Home
From Democracy Now! [March 11, 2025]
---- Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat responds to the arrest of Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and situates it in the long, bipartisan history of anti-Palestine suppression of free speech. “It was the Biden administration, it was the Democratic establishment, that has created the conditions that we are now seeing taken advantage of,” she says of Khalil’s targeting by the Trump administration for deportation. Erakat calls for continued resistance and study of U.S. imperialism and Zionism in the face of racist repression. “This is the precise moment we should be studying Palestine in order to understand ourselves and what’s coming and our responsibility in the world as an imperial power.” [See the Program]. ALSO OF INTEREST is Prof. Erakat’s essay in last month’s Boston Review, “The Boomerang Comes Back: How the U.S.-backed war on Palestine is expanding authoritarianism at home—from Project Esther to violence at the border. [Read it Here].
Columbia Bent Over Backward to Appease Right-Wing, Pro-Israel Attacks — And Trump Still Cut Federal Funding
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [March 8 2025]
---- The campus has been essentially locked down for almost a year. Again and again, Columbia has shown a willingness to throw students, faculty, free speech, and academic freedom under the bus in acquiescence to a right-wing, pro-Israel narrative that treats support for Palestinians as an affront to Jewish safety. For all Columbia’s appeasement, President Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts to the university. “Columbia has worked overtime to appease,” wrote Layla, a student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, who asked to withhold her last name having faced doxxing attacks and harassment from Zionist groups. “Students are miserable. Campus is a panopticon. And their funding was still cut.” [Read More]
