Why is Mahmoud Khalil currently being detained by ICE?
Obviously we know that it is connected to Khalil’s activism, as he helped lead Columbia University’s Gaza protests last spring, but what’s the legal argument for arresting someone over a protest?
The comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others initially suggested that Khalil had been arrested for supporting Hamas, as the group is viewed as a terrorist organization. No proof of this allegation was ever provided, but it wouldn’t really matter if it was. It’s not illegal to say you support Hamas. If the U.S. government believed that Khalil had somehow provided material support to Hamas, then maybe they’d have something thanks to Bill Clinton’s The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
However, they are not even pretending that they have proof of such a thing. The justification for Khalil’s detention seems to have less to do with recent Antiterrorism law and more to do with the Red Scare policies of the McCarthy era.
We now have access to documents showing that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the State Department, Rubio signed off on Khalil’s arrest by using section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
In The Forward, Andrew Silverstein notes that this provision was wielded by the U.S. government to target Jewish Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents during the early 1950s.
This is from a New York Times article from March 10:
Mr. Rubio also reposted a Homeland Security Department statement that accused Mr. Khalil of having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” But officials have not accused him of having any contact with the terrorist group, taking direction from it or providing material support to it.
Rather, the rationale is that the anti-Israel protests Mr. Khalil helped lead were antisemitic and fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students at Columbia, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Rubio’s argument is that the United States has a foreign policy of combating antisemitism around the world and that it would undermine this policy objective to tolerate Mr. Khalil’s continued presence in the United States, they said.
That article quotes Robyn Barnard, an immigration attorney with Human Rights First.
“We haven’t seen anything like this as far as I’ve been a practicing attorney,” said Barnard. “It’s just really deeply concerning to see the U.S. government deciding to use their limited resources in terms of enforcement of immigration laws to target someone whose speech they just disagree with, but otherwise doesn’t seem to violate our First Amendment.”
Khalil’s case represents a truly horrifying precedent, but it is not developing in a vacuum. The move comes amid Trump’s promise of more arrests, draconian crackdowns across dozens of dozens of campuses, and an ominous Department of Education announcement that suggests 60 more schools could find themselves targeted by the federal government in the coming weeks.
Anyone trying to understand this situation must also look at what led up to Khalil’s arrest. Every week at the site we cover the stories of pro-Israel organizations and lawmakers fighting to stifle dissent, whether that’s through the criminalization of movements like BDS or the adoption of policies like the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. For years anti-Palestinian groups have tried to purposely blur the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, not just within the context of the law but among the U.S. population, as a strategy to build support and sympathy for Israel.
Khalil’s case might determine how successful the former effort has been, but the latter endeavor has undeniably failed. Israel’s reputation has been declining for awhile and it has been further damaged as a result of the genocide. A recent Gallup poll revealed that sympathy for the country has dropped to its lowest level in at least 25 years among Americans.
In this sense, the Trump administration’s recent actions should be viewed alongside AIPAC launching its first Super PAC, the creation of DMFI, the McCarthyite Congressional hearings targeting universities, Democratic leadership blocking a Palestinian from speaking at the DNC, and dozens of other related developments.
Khalil’s unspeakable ordeal is part of a backlash aimed at the bravery of young activists across the country. It seeks to stave off justice and the arrival of a Free Palestine.
Davis Out, Boehler Sidelined
A couple interesting developments in Trumpland.
Let’s start with retired Lt. Col. Danny Davis, who was reportedly tapped to become Deputy Director of National Intelligence under DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
After news of Davis’s potential broke, Jewish Insider quickly ran a post running down his problematic “anti-Israel” views.
This includes shocking stuff like, he thought the war on Gaza was bad.
“On a practical level, we give away enormous leverage and credibility globally to hold *anyone* accountable for acts of wanton violence, bc we not merely turn a blind eye to it, we cheer it on and supply the means to do more,” Davis tweeted earlier this year. “On a moral level this is a stain on our character as a nation, as a culture, that will not soon go away.”
He also accurately said accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and compared Gaza to a “prison,” which is not exactly a controversial statement beyond the contours of pro-Israel websites like Jewish Insider.
Davis is a foreign policy analyst so he unsurprisingly attempted to situate the October 7 attacks into a wider context.
“Let me say before anyone else brings it up: to those who would scream ‘October 7th!’ let me reply. The history of this conflict did not begin on that day. In the summer PRIOR to 10/7, the IDF was on a brutal fight against Palestinians,” he wrote. “And of course this goes back *decades* of repression and the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip being effectively incarcerated, with limited or no freedoms, and no path to a future and a hope.”
Last December Davis criticized Ted Cruz (R-TX) after the Senator called for university funding to be cut over the Gaza protests.
“Where is [your] moral outrage at the Israeli gov that continues to kill kids and other civilians without remorse or military necessity?,” Davis tweeted at Cruz. “Where is even a tiny bit of concern for the Palestinian *Christians* who are also killed in Gaza and the West Bank?” Davis continued. “Where is [your] passionate defense of the Bill of Rights for American citizens and students to give even full throated defense of issues you oppose, like the indiscriminate killing of the most vulnerable segment of the Palestinian population in Gaza?”
Consideration for Davis was quickly rescinded. The reversal was celebrated by right-wing pundits like Mark Levin, who had dutifully shared the Jewish Insider post with his millions of followers.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos has a nice post summarizing the situation at Responsible Statecraft.
“It may be obvious but that is exactly what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and DNI Gabbard said they wanted to bring to the table — a refreshing, dramatic shift from the status quo, which had become sclerotic, secretive, and punishing of dissent. Gabbard herself is an Iraq War-era veteran who risked her career to tell uncomfortable truths about American foreign policy and war,” she writes. “Her very public statements about bad Washington policies and the special interests leading us unto unnecessary wars aligned well with Danny’s important work over the last several years.”
“So it is not surprising that the most strident voices in the War Party, particularly pro-Israel hawks trying desperately to manage the remembered history of the 9/11 wars, had it in for him,” Vlahos continues. “He is an anathema to everything they have stood for over the last two decades: he is against the U.S. trying to impose its interests and values on the world via foreign regime change, he believes the military is overextended and needlessly placed in harm’s way overseas, and he has criticized the military industrial complex for risking troop readiness and basic conventional warfighting capabilities by deferring to the war profiteers in the industry. He has also echoed George Washington’s warning about entangling alliances in his own warnings about unconditional aid to Israel and Ukraine.”
In a seemingly related story, Trump official Adam Boehler has reportedly been sidelined from the ceasefire negotiations as a result of his recent media appearances.
In an interview with Jake Tapper, the (former) envoy for hostages defended the Trump administration for negotiating with Hamas (“They don’t have horns growing out of their head..they’re pretty nice guys.”) and pushed back on the idea that Israeli interests are always aligned with the United States.
“We’re not an agent of Israel,” he claimed.
Boehler’s viral moment led to a Times of Israel Op-Ed calling him “complacent, confused and dangerously naive.” The National Review said he was “blundering.”
Boehler tried to stop the bleeding by (what else?) publicly condemning Hamas.
“I want to be CRYSTAL CLEAR as some have misinterpreted,” he tweeted. “Hamas is a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of innocent people. They are BY DEFINITION BAD people. And as @POTUS has said, not a single Hamas member will be safe if Hamas doesn’t RELEASE ALL HOSTAGES IMMEDIATELY.”
Apparently this wasn’t enough to save his spot on the ceasefire team.
Now a GOP lawmakers are telling (you guessed it) the Jewish Insider that Boehler shouldn’t just be sidelined, but kicked out of the administration over the comments. “It’s like he’s in Never Never Land,” one Republican told the website.
The source is accidentally correct. Boehler’s belief that he could question the “Special Relationship” and keep his post was certainly fairy tale thinking.
By Michael Arria
Source : Mondoweiss
