Who Is Mahmoud Khalil, The Protester The Trump Admin Wants To Deport?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis.
I cover politics. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover immigration policy.
And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, the case of Mahmoud Khalil.
He's a Columbia University graduate facing possible deportation for the role he's played in campus protests in support of Palestine. His arrest is challenging the bounds of both immigration law and First Amendment protections.
And we're going to talk about both today. But first, Jimena, can you start by telling us more about who Khalil is? He was born in Syria and is of Palestinian descent.
His lawyer has said that he grew up in Syria because his grandparents were removed from their home in Tiberias, which is now part of Israel, but used to be Palestine. He recently graduated from Colombia in December, but before that, he became the face of the pro-Palestinian movement during the wave of campus protests last year.
He's been described as one of the negotiators between students and university administrators and a spokesperson for the students. And then on March 8th, he's arrested by ICE agents at home in his New York apartment.
What was the cause for his arrest? So President Trump in January directed the government in one of his executive actions to use all of its tools to punish those that have engaged in, quote, anti-Semitic harassment and violence. This executive action cites a federal law that authorizes deporting foreign nationals who also, quote, endorse or espouse terrorist activity.
So the Department of Homeland Security and other members of the administration have said that Khalil has been arrested in support of this action and that Khalil had, quote, led activities aligned to Hamas, which is a

designated terrorist organization. Now, he hasn't been charged yet with a crime that I've been

tracking, but is being held in a detention facility in Louisiana, one that's ran by the Immigrations

and Customs Enforcement Agency. We should note that Khalil is a lawful permanent resident,

also known as having a green card, and his wife is an American citizen. So there's broad thought that Trump's targets on this action would have been those on temporary student visas or undocumented students, which he is not.
And my understanding is the law would actually be much more on the Trump administration's side if he was just here on a student visa. The administration absolutely has the power to revoke visas.
Right. It could have been a lot easier to just say that your visa is being revoked or rescinded for various reasons.
But the green card and having a legal permanent resident status does add complications, particularly for the Trump administration, where now it's likely that an immigration judge will be the one to make that decision. Mara, President Trump has championed Khalil's arrest.
He said it's the first quote of many to come. Certainly suggests this administration is going to be eager to have exactly this kind of high-profile immigration fight.
Yes, and I think as in so many of the Trump administration's efforts since he was inaugurated, this is about pushing the edge of the envelope because they chose a legal resident to go after first, not just somebody on a student visa. So I think that this expulsion or attempted expulsion is really about the First Amendment as much as it's about immigration.
It's true, Mara, but as I was thinking about this, like, yes, it's about immigration. It's about the First Amendment.
But this particular case to me also seems to be in response to that wave of campus protests last year around the Israel-Hamas war. I mean, during the campaign, Trump pledged to quash all these protest debates, to throw people out of the country.
And in that regard, he does seem to have some element of public support here. Oh, yeah.
We should have added one more thing. It's about immigration, the First Amendment, and it's about colleges.
And especially elite colleges like Columbia have become part of Trump's enemies list. He recently moved to get rid of $400 million of federal funding that goes to Columbia because of these protests, which he has called anti-Semitic.
And the campus protests were unpopular, not unlike some of the other targets that Trump

has chosen first, like foreign aid, like people here without documentation, like anything

that benefits trans people, faceless federal bureaucrats.

I mean, these are politically popular targets. All right,

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And Khalil's arrest also has the potential to become a fascinating pressure test on First Amendment protections. Some baseline facts here.
Khalil is a legal resident of the U.S., which means he's entitled to all the constitutional protections, including due process, as everyone else. And Mara, I mean, we're journalists.
We know this. The First Amendment exists in large part to protect unpopular ideas.
The Trump administration has accused Khalil of being pro-Hamas. His lawyer would obviously take contention with that.
But it seems like, you know, it's a pretty clear-cut case of maybe trying to police unpopular political speech. Yeah.
And Trump is pushing against all sorts of constitutional protections in the hope and expectation that at least on a lot of them, the Supreme Court will be on his side. The paradox here is that Trump and the MAGA right really positioned themselves as free speech absolutists.
And this arrest directly contradicts that argument. They've been talking for years about how conservative speech is censored on the internet, on college campuses, that the more speech the better, even if it involves promoting conspiracy theories that aren't true.
And all of a sudden, they've now decided that when it's speech they don't like, they want to try to curtail those constitutional protections. These are also moments to me that sometimes bend the reality curve in politics because I was struck yesterday by Ann Coulter, who's a conservative media pundit.
But one of the things she's known for is being very anti-immigration. And even she put a statement on X that said, there's almost no one I don't want to deport, but unless they've committed a crime, isn't this a violation of the First Amendment? I mean, even people who traditional conservatives, and I would note that traditional conservatives are often some of the most strongest First Amendment supporters, are maybe not aligning with the Trump administration on this.
Well, that depends on how you look at the rule of law. If you think the rule of law should be replaced by the law of the ruler and that one guy should decide what is protected speech and what isn't, then, yeah, it's possible that the courts will rule that Trump can do this, that it's possible to go after arrests like these.
And then, as Trump promised, you'll see many more. But if you believe that the constitutional protections are correct and they just haven't been applied across the board and they've been prejudiced against conservatives, then that's something different.
But yes, there are splits inside the MAGA movement. But for now, Trump gets to define what that movement stands for.
Amanda, this is a case happening in real time, but what's happening next? What are you watching for? Well, a federal judge in New York City ordered on Monday that Khalil not be deported while the court is considering, you know, the legal challenge to his arrest brought by his lawyers. We're awaiting for additional legal documents to drop today, and that might determine whether or not a hearing scheduled for tomorrow continues to move forward.
It is also possible that he has to go through the immigration court process as well. You know, revoking a green card is something that does happen for violating terms of being a lawful permanent residence, committing crimes like aggravated felonies, committing fraud, etc.
But ultimately, that is its own legal fight separately in immigration court, which is its own separate world of all the other courts that we're kind of talking about right now. I think I want to ask both of you, how big of an impact do you see this case potentially having about something bigger that's happening under the Trump administration, either in terms of how far this president's going to be willing to go to win on these immigration fights, or how far he's willing to go to sort of do battle with his political opponents? Oh, I think this is a very important case for a number of reasons.
One, it's going to test the boundaries of what the court will let him do in terms of applying the First Amendment selectively to his supporters, not to his opponents. But also, whether it has a chilling effect.
We already know that people are self-censoring, whether it's newspaper owners or corporations pulling back on things they think Donald Trump doesn't like. And then we'll see if campus protests self-censor and if there's a chilling effect on dissent on college campuses, which I think is one of the stated goals of the Trump administration, all because they're worried and scared, really, of what the Trump administration might do if they decide to come after them.
And I think this is going to be another case. Maybe students from different countries will not want to come here.
I think it has a lot of ramifications. On the immigration front, this really does build on Trump's first-term efforts to strip away naturalization or legal status from those who already had it and is already him taking additional steps to help remove status from people who are already in the country to be here lawfully.
You know, this increases the number of people who are eligible for deportations. But the caveat that I'll put here is that increasing the number of people who might be eligible for deportation does not mean more deportations.
You know, the administration is openly struggling to keep up with the quotas on arrests, the space, the manpower to house those who are arrested, and they're running out of money.

So much more to say about this, but thank you to you both. That is it for us today.
I'm Susan Davis.

I cover politics. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover immigration policy.
And I'm Mara Liason,

senior national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
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