The Trump administration’s harrowing detention of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil — and the broader repression of student activism on campuses across the country — is being sold to the public under the false pretense of ensuring Jewish safety. As Jewish alumni of Columbia University, we know this to be false — and we believe that Jews, and every American who believes in the First Amendment’s protections for free speech and protest, should understand the threat that Khalil’s detention represents.
Khalil and his wife, who is eight months pregnant, were entering their New York apartment after dinner when they were confronted by plainclothes immigration agents. The agents detained Khalil without producing a warrant, on the pretext that his immigration documents — the agents couldn’t correctly identify which — had been invalidated. He was transported first to New Jersey, and then, sometime around 3 a.m., was flown to Louisiana. For at least four days after his arrest, he was not allowed to speak privately with his attorneys. He has still not been charged with a crime.
The episode resembles an abduction more than it does any traditional process under the law.
Khalil is a lawful permanent resident and is married to an American citizen. Before his arrest, he gained prominence as a spokesperson and mediator for pro-Palestinian activists at Columbia. These activities are clearly protected by the First Amendment, irrespective of his or anyone’s immigration status. It is obvious that the Trump administration has targeted Khalil for publicly holding views against Israel’s war in Gaza. His immediate removal to Louisiana was plainly meant to keep him far from his family and community in New York and force him into a more conservative legal venue for immigration proceedings.
For American Jews, the circumstances surely awaken uncomfortable memories. We recall a long history of living as an unwelcome, often demonized, occasionally tolerated minority.
We recognize the tactic of revoking immigration status as a prelude to discrimination, expulsion, and worse: in the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935, which designated Jews and others as not of “German blood” and rendered them non-citizens; in Mussolini’s 1938 “Laws for the Defense of the Race,” which revoked citizenship given after 1919 to foreign-born Jews; in the 1492 Alhambra Decree that launched the Spanish Inquisition by removing Jews and Muslims as subjects of the Spanish Crown. By coincidence, last week we celebrate Purim and remember when a villain used an almost identical justification to attempt to eradicate us.
In 1950s America, Jews were central targets of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. That era birthed a new law, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which included a “catch and revoke” provision specifically designed to target Jewish immigrants seen to be tied to the Soviet Union. It’s this exact provision of that law which now, nearly 75 years after its original antisemitic inception, is being used against Khalil.
This administration’s pursuit of political opponents won’t end with Khalil; Trump himself has said as much. He is using Khalil as a litmus test of what the public will allow. And if Jews view Trump’s actions as born from a commitment to their wellbeing, rather than from a commitment to retribution and political malice, consider why Trump last week called Sen. Chuck Schumer, the most senior Jewish politician in the country, “a Palestinian” for opposing his tax policy.
Khalil presently awaits further legal proceedings — and the birth of his child — from an ICE detention center a thousand miles from his home in New York. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza are yet again under a complete blockade imposed by Israel in violation of the ceasefire agreement, obstructing food, fuel, and other humanitarian aid from entering. As Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu work to expel Gazans from their homeland, Israel continues to imprison thousands of Palestinians — many of whom, like Khalil, have not been charged with a crime.
Some American Jews will struggle to reconcile themselves to support his release. We ask them to remember the aphorism credited to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Better we recall Voltaire now than Niemöller later: “They came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Kalikoff is an attorney who graduated from Barnard College in 2016. Kerson is a writer and organizer who graduated from Barnard College in 2017. Jaffe is an engineer who graduated from Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2016.