On March 8, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and pro-Palestine activist. Thugs dragged him off in front of his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and transferred him to a detention center in Louisiana where he was initially prevented from speaking to his lawyer in private. Khalil holds a green card, legally entitling him to live and work in the US, as well as the right to “be protected by all laws of the United States, your state of residence, and local jurisdictions.” Nonetheless, the Trump administration seeks to deport him for the “crime” of exercising his First Amendment right to oppose Israeli and American imperialism.
Trump wants to make an example of Khalil and send a stark warning to the rest of the pro-Palestine movement: we will crush you—no matter what it takes.
As Trump posted on social media, “This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
To justify this repression, Trump and his cronies are regurgitating hackneyed slanders equating Palestine solidarity with antisemitism. In reality, protests demanding an end to Israel’s US-backed genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people have nothing whatsoever to do with hatred of Jewish people and, indeed, have attracted the support of many Jewish students and workers.
“Escalating the issue”
Khalil’s arrest follows a series of demonstrations at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate, which began in late February and faced violent repression from the NYPD. Khalil was one of the students who negotiated with the administration and played an active role in Columbia’s Palestine solidarity encampment in April 2024.
With both the capitalist state and college administrations on their side, campus Zionists have become increasingly brazen in their attacks—calling ICE on international students who engage in pro-Palestine activity in the hope of getting their visas revoked.
As The Forward reported, there are a thousand connections between Zionist students at “elite” universities like Columbia and the ruling class, including the state apparatus:
Ross Glick, a pro-Israel activist who previously shared a list of campus protesters with federal immigration authorities, said that he was in Washington, DC for meetings with members of Congress during the Barnard library demonstration and discussed Khalil with aides to Senators Ted Cruz [R] and John Fetterman [D] who promised to “escalate” the issue.He said that some members of Columbia’s board had also reported Khalil to officials.
The issue apparently “escalated” all the way to the White House. Six days after the protest at Barnard, Trump posted: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.” This was no empty threat. On March 8, he officially announced that his administration would pull $400 million in federal funds from Columbia. By some strange coincidence, ICE agents showed up at Khalil’s door that same evening.
Ironically, not long before his arrest, Khalil sent emails to Columbia’s president asking for a guarantee of protection, since Zionist fanatics had been threatening to have him deported. He lived in Columbia housing, and ICE would only have been able to enter university property with the administration’s permission. That same administration has been eerily silent since Khalil was dragged off. But we don’t need to wait for an official press release to get their response to his appeals—they replied through ICE.
“Freedom of speech”
ICE is a tool to terrorize the working class. Bosses use the threat of ICE and deportation to discourage undocumented immigrant workers from organizing and fighting back against their exploitation. Now, the ruling class is using ICE to intimidate and silence legally admitted international students.
Technically, ICE cannot arrest, apprehend, or deport a legal permanent resident like Khalil. That decision can only be made by a judge and, in theory, can only be done if the person has committed a crime. The legal fig leaf for Khalil’s detention is an obscure statute stating that the Secretary of State can deport any alien who poses a threat to American “foreign policy interests.” This cynical justification cannot hide the fact that persecuting Khalil for his political activity is a blatant violation of the First Amendment, which is supposed to ban any law “abridging the freedom of speech.”
There is no other way they can spin it. As Trump’s “border tsar,” Tom Homan expressed it: “When you are on campuses—I hear ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of speech’—can you stand at a movie theater and yell ‘Fire’? Can you slander? Free speech has limitations.”
What are these limitations? Bourgeois “democracy” is nothing other than the dictatorship of the capitalists in “democratic” form. Under this system, “freedom of speech” means you can say whatever you want—as long as what you say doesn’t threaten the interests of the bourgeoisie.
There are no permanent rights or protections for the working class under bourgeois law, even when it comes to something as basic to bourgeois democracy as freedom of speech. As the Greek philosopher Anacharsis said in the 6th century BCE, so must we say today: “Laws are like spiders’ webs; they catch the weak and poor, but are torn to pieces by the rich and powerful.”
Trumpist posturing
The Trumpists have posed as steadfast defenders of free speech against “woke” liberal censorship. In Munich last month, JD Vance criticized European leaders for limiting the free expression of right-wing populist parties, like Germany’s AfD. “Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he said, “just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite.”
The Khalil case exposes this lie. Liberals like Biden gave hypocritical homilies about freedom of speech and assembly—while sending armed goons to crush peaceful student protesters. Trump and his gang, far from doing “precisely the opposite,” are posing as defenders of democratic rights while infringing on the basic rights of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Like the rest of his class, Trump stands behind Netanyahu and the Zionist regime—America’s most reliable ally in the Middle East—and is just as determined as his liberal predecessor to squash any resistance to American imperialism.
Billionaire pressure
This latest attack is the culmination of a process that has been evolving on campuses for years. Even before Israel’s most recent invasion of Gaza, billionaires were pressing universities to take harsher measures against Palestinian student clubs.
After October 7, 2023, billionaires conspired in private group chats to pressure local governments to suppress campus movements and leveraged their large donations to get universities like Harvard and Columbia to suppress Palestine solidarity activists like never before.
After the encampments, university administrators spent all summer plotting their revenge. They ensured that when students came back to campus, they would face draconian measures. Campuses were militarized. Freedom of speech was severely curtailed, and pro-Palestine students and professors were suspended, expelled, or fired.
And still, they couldn’t manage to fully contain the students’ anger. Protests continued into the 2024–25 academic year, despite heavy police repression, doxxing, revocations of student visas, and more.
Nevertheless, the pro-Palestine movement is relatively weak at present when compared to the initial outpouring of anger after October ,7 or the height of the encampment movement last spring. With fewer people engaged in the struggle, the ruling class sees an opportunity to try to snuff it out.
They know that the class rage simmering beneath the surface of society will, sooner or later, come to a boil. The capitalists want to strengthen the repressive apparatus of their state as much as they can in advance of future class battles. Trump is the vehicle for fulfilling this need. He is willing to do whatever it takes to silence pro-Palestine students—including using ICE as a blunt instrument to attack their right to freedom of speech.
Fight back against a new McCarthyist witch hunt
Universities are a microcosm of wider society. The Palestine solidarity movement is only one expression of the growing rage felt by young people who see no future under capitalism.
As the class struggle intensifies, the bourgeoisie will be forced to lift the veil further and reveal the naked violence of their class rule. This process is discrediting all capitalist institutions. Universities, once seen as beacons of free inquiry, are now exposed for what they always were: profit-driven businesses and bastions of capitalist ideology.
If Trump gets his way, Khalil will be the first victim of this new McCarthyist witch hunt. Repression might have the desired effect in the short run, but the pressure inside universities will only build up, leading the way to larger and more convulsive expressions of the class struggle on campuses.
To fight the witch hunt and defend our basic rights, students must fight—not only for freedom of speech, but ultimately, for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. To succeed, they must link up with the broader working class. This requires a revolutionary communist party organized on and off campus that can expose the historical impasse of this rotten system and point the way forward to a genuinely free world.
