Source: Just Security
by Faiza Patel
“On March 8, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian protests on the university’s campus. They claimed that Khalil’s student visa had been revoked and, when told that he had a green card, said that too had been revoked. While the full facts of the case are yet to emerge, there seems little doubt that Khalil was detained in retaliation for his activism. U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently and explicitly threatened to go after university protestors, including in his Executive Order on ‘Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,’ which I analyzed in an earlier post. Trump celebrated Khalil’s arrest on social media, warning that it was the first ‘of many to come.'” (03/19/25)