Millions of US permanent residents are now on notice: support Trump, or risk being branded an enemy of the American people
WASHINGTON DC – Illegal immigrants are already cowering across the United States, fearful that at any time they could fall victim to Donald Trump’s mass deportation squads. Ukrainian refugees are nervously wondering whether Trump may soon overturn the temporary protections that allow them to reside in America. Now, even green card holders are suddenly worrying that they could soon feature on Trump’s deportation list.
Saturday night’s arrest of student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a “green card” holder and thus a permanent legal resident of the United States, has sounded alarm bells from coast to coast. Born in Syria to Palestinian parents in 1995, Khalil was pulled off the streets of New York City without any warning by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security. He then disappeared until Monday, when his lawyer discovered that Khalil had been transported to a detention facility in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles from his Manhattan home.
Protesters rally in support of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)
Protesters rally in support of Khalil on Wednesday after his detention (Photo: Jason DeCrow/ AP)
Stunningly, the arresting agents charged Khalil with no crime. His American wife, who is eight months pregnant, says that initially the ICE team claimed that her husband had fraudulently obtained a student visa to attend Columbia University. When told that, in fact, Khalil is a green card holder, and therefore had no visa that could have been fraudulently obtained, they carted him away anyway.
The Trump administration is now seeking to declare Khalil persona non grata in the United States due to his activities leading last year’s student protests on the university campus. Khalil, a student at Columbia since 2023, is a prominent critic of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. At the demonstrations, he also condemned US support for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet. Today, he has suddenly become a poster child for Trump’s widening threats towards any legal migrants in America who voice opinions that run counter to the President’s “Make America Great Again” viewpoint.
FILE - Palestinian supporters, including Mahmoud Khalil, second from left, demonstrate during a protest at Columbia University, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
Palestinian supporters, including Mahmoud Khalil, second from left, demonstrate during a protest at Columbia University in October 2023 in New York (Photo: Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, angrily accused Khalil of “siding with Hamas terrorists who have killed innocent men, women and children”. She accused him of deliberately disrupting classes at Columbia, making Jewish-American students feel unsafe, and said he had “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of Hamas”. She claimed to have copies of the flyers in her possession, but opted not to share them with reporters in order to safeguard what she called “the dignity” of the White House briefing room.
Along with more than 12 million other green card holders, Khalil is entitled to exactly the same legal protections as full American citizens, including – crucially in this case – the freedom of speech guarantees contained within the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Political speech is entirely protected in America, and whether they are demonstrators, activists, journalists or purely private figures, permanent legal residents have, until now, enjoyed the same constitutional protections as US citizens.
Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York City, U.S., June 1, 2024. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon REFILE - CORRECTING NAME FROM "MOHAMMAD" TO "MAHMOUD".
Mahmoud Khalil, centre, as pro-Palestinian protests were under way at Columbia University last June (Photo: Jeenah Moon/Reuters)
In Trump’s first term, there were early threats to require “loyalty tests” for green card holders. Some then became swept up in the February 2017 travel ban that Trump instituted against seven majority-Muslim nations, and there were multiple reports of border agents asking green card holders about their political views when they flew back into the country.
Now, in what looks set to become a landmark case, the White House is seeking to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him, events that in the past have only occurred when permanent legal residents are convicted of serious crimes. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has turned to an obscure provision of the 1952 Immigration and Naturalisation Act that allows him to revoke the green card of an immigrant whose “presence or activities in the United States…would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.
Rubio, on Wednesday, told reporters “no one has a right to a green card” and denied that Khalil’s treatment was related to freedom of speech. He claimed that anyone seeking permission to enter the United States who failed to disclose being “a big supporter of Hamas” with plans to “rile up all kinds of…antisemitic activities” on university campuses would have their visa denied or revoked. “If you end up having a green card…we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that,” Rubio asserted.
Khalil’s supporters descended on Manhattan’s federal courthouse on Wednesday, where his lawyers launched their efforts to secure his freedom. It emerged that since his arrest, Khalil has been denied any opportunity to speak privately with his attorneys, and the government was accused of playing fast and loose with his location in an effort to make it even harder to locate him within the federal prison system.
Judge Jesse Furman ordered the government to permit Khalil to speak privately to his lawyers by the end of Thursday, so they can prepare a new filing demanding his release. Furman advised both parties that “there is some need for speed here”. But simultaneously, Thomas Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, was telling reporters in Albany that the student leader was “a national security threat…You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but not in this administration”, he warned.
The White House says more arrests are imminent, and chided Columbia University for failing to provide information regarding the whereabouts of several other student protesters it plans to detain. Whether they are green card holders like Khalil is unclear. But millions of US permanent residents are now on notice: support Trump, or risk being branded an enemy of the American people.