The Trump administration’s disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil is chilling

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested at Columbia University by immigration officers. They told him his student visa was revoked; upon learning that he is a legal permanent resident, they said his green card was revoked, too. As of this writing Khalil is in custody, awaiting trial in an immigration court—not in New York but in Louisiana, far from his family, his work, his community, and his lawyers. Khalil has not been afforded due process. He has essentially been disappeared.

Why? He led pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist protests at Columbia. The Trump administration points to a January executive order targeting “unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”; the administration also maintains that Khalil supports Hamas, which the US has long considered a terrorist organization. But the government hasn’t produced any evidence, and its court summons provides a single rationale: Khalil’s presence in the United States has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” This phrase comes from an obscure 1952 statute. Legal scholar Stephen Vladeck told The New York Times that he knows of only one other time it’s been cited in a deportation proceeding: in 1995, when a Mexican national, in the US on a visa, was wanted at home for money laundering.

But Khalil has a green card, and he hasn’t been accused of any crime. Canary Mission, a conservative group that keeps tabs on anti-Zionist campus activists, has tracked him calling for divestment from Israel, pointing out that armed resistance is legal under international law, and more—but not disparaging Jewish people as a group or endorsing Hamas.