First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then 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.
—Martin Niemöller
On Saturday, they came for Mahmoud Khalil. They have come for others with the police, firings, and expulsions. And now, the Trump administration is threatening the 30-year-old Palestinian Green Card-holder with deportation for, as his lawyer Ramzi Kassem explains, “for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the U.S. government and of the Israeli government.”
It is essential that we all speak out to say: free Mahmoud Khalil now, defend the right to protest, and an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
Since Khalil’s detention on Saturday night, there have been protests and walkouts all over the country, including actions like rallies and sit-ins organized by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace. Three million people have signed an online petition calling for his release. As a result, on Monday, a judge temporarily blocked the deportation, and on Wednesday, the court held a hearing to decide whether Khalil’s transfer to a federal detention facility in Louisiana violated the law. In a clear violation of his rights, Khalil had not been allowed a single private phone call with his lawyer since his arrest.
It is a first win that Khalil’s deportation was temporarily blocked, and it shows the immense power of the democratic campaign to free him. But in order to decisively stop his deportation, we need everyone to stand up in our workplaces, universities, and in the streets. We know the story: If they can come for Khalil, they can come for all of us. So, we must build a movement based on solidarity: if they touch one of us, we all rise up.
Then They Came for Khalil…
The White House is using an obscure Cold War provision called Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 to justify rescinding Khalil’s Green Card. This act allows the Secretary of State to declare someone “deportable” if they have “reasonable ground to believe” that the immigrant’s “presence or activities in the U.S. … would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
As Forward reports, this 1952 act was used against Jewish people in the red scare era: “The act’s quotas and ideological litmus test were widely understood at the time to target Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents.” Now, it’s being used to target Palestinians and international students who stand with Palestine. As Brad Parker, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights explained, “This is not about security, this is about absolute executive power and repression.”
As I wrote previously,
Trump is using the Palestine movement as the point of the spear to repress the right to protest itself — opening the way for even more attacks on labor, trans rights, immigrants rights, and the university itself. He is also using attacks on the Palestine movement as a way to defund, cut, and gut the university.
We’ve already seen this plan in action. The Education Department on Monday sent letters to 60 U.S. universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and four University of California schools, warning them of cuts in federal funding unless they addressed allegations of antisemitism on campus.Trump’s Department of Education already cut 400 million dollars in funding from Columbia, and now is cutting $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, claiming these universities have not combatted antisemitism enough — in other words, that they have not been repressive enough to the movement for Palestine.
Although these universities have already called the police on students, suspended them, locked down campus, and created an atmosphere of extreme repression, that’s not enough for Trump. That’s because this is not about antisemitism, which Trump has encouraged (think of Charlottesville, or even Elon Musk’s Nazi salute), but about stamping out protest, curbing free speech and defunding the university. He wants to create an atmosphere of fear so that the movement for Palestine does not rise up again.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump said on Truth Social. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again.” Already, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has come to other students’ dorms, and artificial intelligence is being used to find international students who support Palestine. Further, Israel has cut off aid to Gaza, and is continuing to ethnically cleanse the region, as Trump promises to turn Gaza into the “riviera of the Middle East.”
This escalation in attacks is the result of the policies of the Democratic Party, that not only committed a genocide against the Palestinians, alongside the Republicans, but who repressed and suppressed the movement. Democrats continue to work alongside Trump today to curtail pro-Palestine speech, opening the door to this violation of Khalil’s rights.
Trump is not only attacking the movement for Palestine. He is firing federal workers, including half of the department of education, attempts towards mass deportations, attacks on trans rights and more. He wants to suppress all dissent and force us to accept attacks in silence.
But Trump has already failed. He hoped deporting Khalil would stop the movement for Palestine and the movement at universities — instead, there’s a resurgence. But in order for that resurgence to free Khalil and beat back Trump’s attacks, we must organize a united struggle against Trump, without any faith or support in the genocidal Democratic Party.
Free Khalil, Fight for Our Right to Protest
As author and activist Conor Tomas Reed explains,
The arrest and attempted deportation is a clear assault on all of our ability to organize. It is at the nexus of the immigrant rights, Palestine solidarity, and university struggles. As James Balwdin said to Angela Davis ‘if they can come for you in the morning, they can come for the rest of us at night.’
In short, the fight to free Khalil is the fight for all of our rights.
There was a first battle won — mass indignation led to staying the deportation. But our enemies are powerful. In order to defeat them, we need to strengthen and massify the struggle from below.
That means we need to organize from below: every single university department should be organizing discussions and action committees to mobilize around this. We need university-wide assemblies to discuss next steps for the struggle and most importantly — how to bring more people into the struggle. We must unleash the creativity of the rank and file in order to strengthen the struggle.
We urgently need unions to stand up. The United Auto Workers, which organizes Columbia graduate student workers, has issued a statement saying the union “will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice.” Yet, they say not a single word about Khalil. We must not only say his name, but organize an immediate and urgent campaign against his deportation. That includes building the strength to strike at Columbia, but also among other university unions and in fact, organizing auto workers to shut it down as well. United, we can free Mahmoud Khalil and build a movement to beat back all of Trump’s attacks.