As Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil faces US deportation, Columbia Journalism School speaks out
ByAshima Grover
Mar 15, 2025 04:38 PM IST
Columbia University faculty defended press freedom in a statement released after Mahmoud Khalil's arrest last Saturday.
Last week, federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and Palestinian activist at Columbia University who played a prominent role in the institution’s protests against Israel. At the time of the arrest, Khalil was inside his university-owned apartment on Saturday night when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him into custody, his attorney Amy Greer told The Associated Press.
Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card and a recent Columbia graduate, was arrested by ICE last Saturday. (AP/ File Photo)
Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card and a recent Columbia graduate, was arrested by ICE last Saturday. (AP/ File Photo)
Columbia graduate's arrest marks the beginning of the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists
During a phone call with one of the ICE agents, Greer was told that they were executing State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. When she told the authorities that the Columbia graduate was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, they told her that they were revoking that instead. Confirming Khalil’s arrest, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security later described it as being “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”
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On Sunday evening, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a message on X that the administration “will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
Consequently, Columbia University released an official statement on the current state of affairs, with Khalil’s arrest being documented as the first publicly known deportation effort as Donald Trump previously promised a crackdown on students who participated in college campus protests against the war in Gaza last spring.
Columbia University faculty releases statement defending freedom of press
On March 14, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism faculty defended press freedom, saying that being “a bedrock principle of American democracy,” it is under threat in the US.
“Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all,” began the lengthy response.
Alluding to the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia's School of Public and International Affairs, without being charged with any crime, the university divulged that many of their international students’ anxieties have caused them to even skip out on attending classes and events on campus.
“They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security. President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many,” the university added.
“These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration. We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.”
Citing Khalil’s example, Columbia University stated that all thirteen million legal residents (green card holders) in the US will now live in fear “if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.” Beginning with Khalil’s detainment, the university said the Trump admin “meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.”
“The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press,” noted Columbia, while listing other examples of how media was either favourably speaking about Trump or was vulnerable to being sued, like CBS faced the legal wrath for an interview with Kamala Harris.
“Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America,” the leading university said.
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The Faculty of Columbia Journalism School concluded that it was standing in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. “ The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardize these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism,” the uni faculty signed off.
DHS said Mahmoud Khalil ‘led activities aligned to Hamas,’ without providing evidence
The Trump administration, on its part, claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without any evidence, per ABC News.
“I have those fliers on my desk, they were provided to me by the Department of Homeland Security,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed.
Meanwhile, Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing the Columbia graduate and a permanent resident of the US, slammed the narrative, saying, “All of this talk of flyers is just nonsense, there is no truth to it whatsoever.”
Samah Sisa, a staff attorney at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, also said at a press conference on Friday, “Mahmoud was moved across multiple state lines and subsequently transferred to a remote prison in Louisiana hours after filing his habeas petition, an intentional and retaliatory act and an attempt to interfere with the jurisdiction of the New York court.”
On the other hand, Khalil’s attorneys have maintained that his campus activism has been in support of Palestinian rights and he doesn’t have any ties to Hamas.
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