Photo credit: Luigi Morris
The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on March 8 marked a significant and terrifying escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on democratic rights, the movement for Palestine, campus protest, and the American university system more broadly. It was also a chilling reminder of the immediate need for a defensive united front of working people, students, and the oppressed to combat Trump’s reactionary national agenda, which, in addition to repression of the movement for Palestine and the university, includes the deportation of thousands of immigrants, and attacks on labor unions and trans rights.
So far, the popular response to Khalil’s abduction has been positive. Media outlets across the world have condemned the Trump administration’s attempts to deport him, and thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities and on campuses across the country this week to demand his release. On Tuesday, rallies and speakouts were held at Berkeley, UCLA, and Columbia University. In New York on Tuesday and Wednesday two large rallies were held at Foley and Washington squares. On Thursday, hundreds of activists with Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) held a sit-in at the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City. And on Friday, the Student Workers of Columbia union (SWC) held an inspiring rally to protest the expulsion (and illegal firing) without evidence of the president of the union, Grant Miner, just one day before the start of contract negotiations, for activities related to the occupation of Hind’s Hall (Hamilton Hall) last year. In addition to Miner, 21 other students were reportedly “disciplined” by the university with suspensions, expulsions, and the revoking of degrees.
The UAW and other unions, including the PSC-CUNY, which represents more than 25,000 faculty, staff, and graduate students at the City University of New York, and the SWC, issued statements condemning Khalil’s deportation and the firing of Miner. In a formal statement issued on March 13 the UAW, said “trade unionists everywhere, defenders of the Constitution, of freedom of speech, of academic freedom, and of the right of free association, should be appalled and disgusted by the behavior of Columbia University.” On March 11, the PSC’s president, James Davis — who ironically had successfully acted to repeal the union’s decision to divest from Israel just a month earlier — called Khalil’s arrest “a brazen violation of the constitution.” In its own statement condemning the abduction of Kahlil and the expulsion of Miner, the SWC accused Columbia of attempting to appease the Trump administration in order to win back the more than $400 million in federal contracts and grants that were cancelled just days before Khalil’s arrest.
In response to this popular pressure a federal judge has temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation, but he nonetheless remains in custody in Louisiana, thousands of miles away from his pregnant spouse and his friends in New York. While this is a small victory that shows the power of the movement when it responds quickly to such attacks, these protests and statements have, unsurprisingly, done little to deter the Trump administration, which has continued to insist that it has the right to deport visa holders and permanent residents, and seemingly even citizens, if their presence in the United States interferes with or otherwise weakens U.S. foreign policy. In an extraordinary press conference on the subject, Secretary of State Marco Rubio put aside any pretense of protecting the first amendment, stating that “this is not about free speech, this is about people who do not have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa, no one has a right to a green card by the way.” Rubio’s statements effectively mean that, as far as the Trump administration is concerned, anyone with a visa or green card can be deported without trial for almost any reason the Trump administration deems reasonable. This is not only an attack on students and immigrants, it’s an attack on anyone who opposes Trump and the bootlickers that support him or cower before him.
It is obvious that no amount of angry statements by union leaders will have any real effect on the Trump administration’s blatant and largely unrestrained attempts to crush internal dissent and to round up, doxx, fire, or otherwise punish all of those — including anyone (student, professor, public employee or labor leader) who identifies as a socialist, communist or anti-zionist — who disagree with Trump’s McCarthyist and reactionary agenda. If academic unions and their members are serious about defending academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to dissent, they must act now, along with students and the larger working class, to take real action to defend their workers, students, and universities from these attacks, and to build a united front capable of fighting back. This means immediately calling for assemblies of union members, students, and academic workers on every campus across the country to organize mass strikes and walkouts to demand at the very least the release of Khalil, the reinstatement of every student and worker who has been expelled or fired because of their involvement in the movement for Palestine, the restoration of funding to all universities and colleges, and an end to mass deportations and attacks on labor and trans rights.
This movement has to include union members from every sector, including UAW auto workers who must organize to strike in solidarity with students and their brothers and sisters in the academic unions. Of course, no matter how many statements they make, we cannot count on labor bureaucrats like Shawn Fain, who have tried to sit on two chairs with one ass when it comes to Trump, to actually lead such strikes. Instead the rank and file must build this movement ourselves, from below, in order to force our unions to act. Such rank and file organization to fight for the release of Khalil would not only strengthen the movement for Palestine, but such a fight would make our unions stronger too.