Arrest of Palestinian Student Violates the First Amendment

The United States was built upon the concept of free speech. Sure, there are some necessary limitations, but those limitations are few. For much of the country’s history, any attempt to mute the speech of any person or group has come under tremendous fire, but when Felonious Punk says that he’s going to deport any student who speaks out against Zionism, the only resistance is a faint murmur. Now, the first arrest has been made and Americans seem to have lost their ability to speak.

In case you were sleeping all weekend (and we don’t blame you if you did), Mahmoud Khalil was sitting inside his Columbia University-owned housing, likely taking care of his eight-month pregnant wife, when “several” ICE agents came bursting through the door. Full stop. Right there, ICE likely broke the law. Columbia University says that a signed arrest warrant is to be presented before any arrest of any kind is allowed on campus. There is no indication from any authority that there was a warrant presented to anyone at any time.

ICE officials refused to tell Khalil’s wife whether he was accused of committing a crime. Agents did say that they were acting on the authority of the State Department to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Stop again. Khalil is a permanent resident. Agents said they were revoking his green card as well, which also likely violates US law.

Why Mahmoud Khalil? This all goes back to students protesting Israel’s occupation of Gaza last spring. The President, in his never-ending display of stupidity, claims that by participating in such protests students ‘forfeited’ their right to remain in the country because they were supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization. What President Shitforbrains doesn’t understand is that the protests were not so much pro-Hamas as they were anti-Israel because of the war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people.

Khalil served as a negotiator for students as they bargained with university officials over an end to the tent encampment erected on campus, a role that made him one of the few student activists willing to share his name and identity. So, someone in Washington decided to go for him first, human rights be damned.

This highly illegal activity is standard operating procedure for ICE. The ‘arrest first, ask questions later’ approach is itself a violation of human rights, but no one seems to have the stomach to stand up for people who may or may not be here illegally. Across the country, many law firms are telling their attorneys to not take cases involving anything to do with immigration out of fear of retribution from the White House.

Yet, under no circumstances does citizenship affect one’s right to speak their mind. If that were the case, all the embassies in the country would have to shut down. There would be no foreign visitors to the US at all. Khalil is a permanent resident working towards citizenship. His arrest is not only a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but puts the US on a low human rights status with countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein pointed out that the move could spell trouble for the White House.

“This sort of thing could get the White House in all sorts of legal trouble,” Gerstein wrote on X on Sunday. “Not the substance of the decision, but if WH is really running everything i.e. is operationalized I think a lot of the usual privilege claims will be weaker.”

The problems with this arrest are significant because, if allowed to stand, they set a standard by which other arrests might be made. The right to protest, the right to march and speak out against tyranny and oppression, is central to the freedoms of the United States. We would normally expect there to be more protests and marches, especially at Columbia University, in response to such a blatant violation of the law.

We’re waiting. Someone needs to resist. Who will stand up and scream for Mahmoud Khalil?